Loophole for more miles with the Citi PremierPass Elite MasterCard

The Citi PremierPass Elite MasterCard is unique because it earns you points for every mile you fly when you use the card to purchase airline tickets. For example, when you use the card to buy a ticket from New York to Los Angeles for $300, you will receive 300 points for the cost of the ticket, plus 5,000 points for the roundtrip mileage. In addition, you will receive 5,000 miles in the frequent flyer program of the airline you choose to fly.

Now, here's the story on the little loophole...

Citi uses any transaction associated with an airline ticket number to track whether you should get points for the miles flown on a flight purchase.

That automatically shows up when you first buy the ticket. However, whenever you make other purchases associated with the ticket, the ticket number will tag to those additional transaction.

So for example, I paid $35 using the credit card to upgrade a ticket from San Franicsco to Las Vegas on Virgin America airlines recently. I had already purchased the ticket with the card a few weeks earlier.

When my statement posted, I got points equal to the miles flown **twice** because there were two purchases associated with that ticket number. So, I got miles twice from Citi, and miles from Virgin America -- or triple points on one trip.

Generally, you're only going to have multiple transactions associated with one ticket when you change flights and incur a fee or pay an upgrade or premium seat charge to the airline. But it's nice to know you might get points even faster with this little loophole.

Learn more about the card and where you can apply for it at this link.