The transfer bonus from American Express Membership Rewards Points to British Airways Avios points is BACK!! This is as good as it’s ever been, at a bonus of 50%. They ran a 50% bonus last summer, and then they ran a 30% bonus this past Fall/Spring. 50% is back baby! So if you’re looking to to use your AMEX MR points for American Airlines flights or other Oneworld Alliance flights, this is a GREAT option! The transfer is coded into the MR program when you transfer, so you don’t have to register anywhere to get it.
If you don’t have a British Airways Executive Club account, you can signup HERE:
Keep in mind that Avios points awards don’t price out like most airlines do like 25k for Domestic, 40-60k for Europe, etc… They are all DISTANCE based per each LEG of the flight.
Here’s a great award chart reference to figure out if it’s worth it for you. Kudos to The Points Guy for this chart.
Blue Class is normal ECONOMY/COACH
EXAMPLE FROM OMAHA, NE TO GUATEMALA CITY, GUATEMALA:
If I’m flying from OMA to GUA (Omaha to Guatemala City) on American Airlines, then I will have to price out each leg to find the total Avois points needed, which would be: OMA-DFW & DFW-GUA. You can find the route out by doing a simple search on www.aa.com to see how American Airlines flies to your destination. To calculate the distances of each leg, go to www.gcmap.com and enter in your full route which for me would be “OMA-DFW-GUA”. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and that will give me the distances that I need to compare to the chart above to find out how many Avios points are needed. GCmap tells me that the first flight OMA-DFW is 583 miles which is 4,500 Avios points (one way), and DFW to GUA is 1,325 miles which is 10,000 Avios each way. For a total of 14,500 each way, or 29,000 Avios round trip in Economy. That’s a great example of how the Avios Points program can be a better deal than the American Airlines AAdvantage for AA flights when the distances are short. That flight on AA would cost 35,000 miles.
Here’s the beauty of it all – with this 50% transfer from AMEX to BA, it’s only going to cost me a little over 19,000 AMEX MR points for a round trip flight to Guatemala!! How awesome is that?! I actually did this exact award for a trip to Guatemala in February. You can read my post series on that trip, and how awesome it was HERE.
MY PLAN:
I’m personally trying to decide if I’m going to use this transfer bonus or not. Since the bonus lasts until May 31st, I’m hoping that maybe I will be able to plan out my Fall travel plans by then, and maybe I’ll be in need of some British Airways Avios points by then to utilize this bonus. Recently I’ve had the great problem of having way more miles than I can currently use in multiple programs, so I’m not really in desperate need to use this transfer bonus. I currently have 230,000 American Airlines miles and around 100,000 British Airways left after using this bonus last year and the BA 100k card. However, this bonus is so lucrative, that I might end up transferring over at least some of my Amex points for future flights b/c I’m currently swimming in AMEX MR points as well with over 160,000. Usually for points like Membership Rewards from AMEX and Chase Ultimate Rewards, I try to keep the points in the account and only transfer them out when I need them, OR for huge bonuses like this. That said, we shall see, we shalllll seeeeeee!
What are your plans?
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Do you know if you just have to complete the transfer by May 31st or if you have to actually spend the miles by May 31st?
That's just the date for the promotion on the transfer. Once the miles are in your British Airways account then they run by the BA program rules. Off the top of my head the miles don't expire for 18 months after previous activity (earning miles). So if you transfer tomorrow, and then 16 months later you earn or transfer in more miles to British Airways, you've just renewed them.
Thank you!