US Bank Altitude Reserve Gets Transfer Partners — Including Ethiopian ShebaMiles

Yesterday, US Bank turned on transfer partners for Altitude Reserve cardholders, more than a year after first promising the feature. Transfers run through a US Bank-branded version of Points.com, and at least one reader reported an instant transfer to Flying Blue on day one.

The initial list of partners is small, but it covers three alliances and one hotel program: Accor Live Limitless (2:1), Air France-KLM Flying Blue, Ethiopian ShebaMiles, and Qantas Frequent Flyer. All airline transfers process 1:1.

Ethiopian is the real surprise here — it's not a transfer partner for any other transferable points currency in the U.S., and the airline's fifth-freedom routes (like Stockholm (ARN) to Oslo (OSL)) can price as low as 10,000 miles one-way in economy and 15,000 in business.

There's a catch: the only card with the option is Altitude Reserve, which US Bank stopped accepting new applications for back in November 2024. Other US Bank cards do not yet have points transfers at the time of publishing.

Andrew's Take

Ethiopian is an interesting addition — the airline has a handful of interesting fifth-freedom routes, and it's nice to see a partner that no other transferable program has. Flying Blue is worth a look too. It's an easy option for getting to Europe on the cheap. But gating these partners behind a discontinued card is odd, and it makes me wonder if we'll see the Altitude Reserve card relaunch in the near future.