One of the most useful transfer partners of American Express Membership Rewards is British Airways Executive Club.
40% Amex to BA transfer bonus
Through January 31, 2015, Amex Membership Rewards is offering a 40% transfer bonus to British Airways Executive Club.
The bonus is hard-coded into the transfer ratio at a rate of 1,400 Avios per 1,000 Membership Rewards points, meaning you can earn the bonus an unlimited number of times. There’s no registration required.
I know a lot of people have been waiting for this promotion, given how few transfer bonuses we’ve seen from Membership Rewards’ better transfer partners lately. Back in the day they were common, while this is the only transfer bonus we’ve seen from Amex to British Airways all year.
To put this into context, the last transfer bonuses from Amex to BA were as follows:
Why BA Avios are awesome
British Airways Executive Club is somewhat of an unconventional program, given that they have a distance based award chart. They charge you based on the distance you fly on a per segment basis (in other words, you’re charged individually for each segment, as opposed to for the cumulative cost of flying between your origin and destination).
Their distance based chart looks as follows:
| Distance in Air Miles | Avios Cost in Economy | Avios Cost in Business | Avios Cost in First |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1-650 | 4,500 | 9,000 | 13,500 |
| 651-1151 | 7,500 | 15,000 | 22,500 |
| 1152-2000 | 10,000 | 20,000 | 30,000 |
| 2001-3000 | 12,500 | 25,000 | 37,500 |
| 3001-4000 | 20,000 | 40,000 | 60,000 |
| 4001-5500 | 25,000 | 50,000 | 75,000 |
| 5501-6500 | 30,000 | 60,000 | 90,000 |
| 6501-7000 | 35,000 | 70,000 | 105,000 |
| 7001-10000 | 50,000 | 100,000 | 150,000 |
This makes Avios exceedingly valuable for short distance flights, which are often disproportionately expensive. Being able to redeem 4,500 Avios for any flight under 650 miles is a great value, especially since you can redeem for travel on Alaska, American, and US Airways, just to name a few.
British Airways Executive Club does impose fuel surcharges for travel on some partner airlines. Generally it’s easier to list the airlines on which they have no/low fuel surcharges, which include:
- Aer Lingus flights: all flights have low fuel surcharges
- airberlin: all flights
- Alaska Airlines: all flights
- American Airlines and US Airways: flights within North America and to South America
- Japan Airlines: domestic flights
- LAN: all flights
Redeem just 25,000 Avios for Aer Lingus business class between Boston and Dublin
I would speculatively transfer points
I don’t often say this because I tend to think a lot of the value from transferable points currencies comes from the flexibility they provide. That being said, this is the first transfer bonus we’ve seen all year, and the biggest we’ve seen in roughly two years.
Personally I’ll speculatively be transferring some points to British Airways with this offer, as I find Avios to be one of the most practical points currencies.
Other ways to earn Avios
One other great thing about the BA Avios program is that they partner with the a lot of the “major” transferable points currencies. That makes Avios extremely easy to come by for the purposes of topping off accounts. But rarely do we see transfer bonuses, which makes transferring them from Membership Rewards especially tempting.
As a reminder, here are the cards you can use to earn these points.
Earn Avios
Bottom line
This is exciting, and I suspect many of you will jump on the opportunity to convert Membership Rewards points into Avios… as you should!
Will you be converting Amex points into Avios with this promotion?
Why are the TYP cards listed in the chart? You can’t transfer them into Avios, can you? Or did I miss something?
yeah, I think the wrong chart was posted. Chase cards can’t xfr MR points.
@ colleen @ Brian L. — Fixed, thanks!
Ben – Can you redeem Avios for CX travel?
For an itinerary like JFK-HKG-HYD(or anywhere in India) how much would the fuel and surcharges approximately run?
I think you mean the sentence just before the chart to read “transfer Avios” and not “transfer MR points”
@ colleen — Whoops, really not my day. Thanks!
@ Phatmiles — You sure can. Fuel surcharges are maybe $150-200 each way, so not too bad.
Hi Ben,
Perhaps just thinking aloud, I have a good number UR and UA points, plus about 150k AA and 200k MR. I had picked up the Amex cards to get to SQ but now accessible through UR. Wondering the best use of the MR points and hand been thinking of a first class trip for 2 to SE Asia on CX or via the middle east. Looking at your response to Phatmiles I might be better off and transferring to BA and collecting this bonus rather than using the AA miles for CX. I guess my question is, do you thing so and what are the risks of miles in BA expiring?
Thanks LF.
@ Levy Flight — In general I think it’s still a better value to redeem American miles, given their lower redemption rates and lack of fuel surcharges. That being said, given your mileage balances it could make sense to use American miles for a one-way for two, and then BA Avios in the other direction.
@Lucky – OK, I know I’m not going crazy. 😀 Speaking of TYP, do you think they’ll add any new xfer partners anytime soon? Right now the only xfer partner that really interests me is Flying Blue.
Really interesting offer for me.
Sitting on about 200k MR points and about 180k Avios right now
(probably 250k US/AA and, 100k united, and 75k UR as well)
I know I have about 25k Avios in Australia domestic travel coming in Feb/Mar, but no specific plans for the rest of the balance. That said, I also don’t have a specific plan for the 200k MR points either.
I’m considering transferring MR points with the bonus to cover the Australian travel and maybe an Aer Lingus US to Ireland round trip. But I’ve already got plenty of miles for that, so I’d just be taking advantage because of the bonus. Can’t decide if the flexibility of keeping those points in MR is the best choice or not.
Decisions decisions!
Am I correct in believing that Canadian Amex Rewards account holders are not included in this sweet deal? My Amex account offers 1000 Avios points for 1000 Amex points.
@ Brian L. — Would be nice, but also wouldn’t count on it. I think most of the airlines part of these transferable points currencies have enough partners as it stands.
@ Ian C — Correct, it’s the US Membership Rewards program only.
Lucky, another good time-limited avios transfer offer for your Canadian readers wraps up at the end of the month. RBC Avion Visa cardholders can transfer RBC Rewards points for a 50% bonus until that time. It’s a great deal – one which I just took advantage of myself. Futhermore if you’re in Canada and get a new RBC British Airways Visa before year’s end you get double the sign up sign up bonus for a total of 30,000 avios. Same general avios use rules apply which means there are zero domestic Canadian usage options but with lots of AA, US and Alaska transborder flights from many Canadian gateways its still a great short haul hack. Plus Aer Lingus year round flights YYZ-DUB make Europe and the UK accessible for many in central Canada. Worth exploring given we Canadians typically have less generous offers than stateside.
Love your blog.
Can you transfer to an AU spouse’s BA acct? Care to speculate whether BA devalues anytime soon 🙂 LAX-OGG for 18k MR r/t is a steal.
@ Stannis — You can transfer to authorized users, but not to a spouse if they’re not an authorized user, at least per the rules. I don’t necessarily think they’ll devalue anytime soon, though I could be wrong.
Has anyone heard whether this Avios bonus scheme will soon apply to UK AMEX holders? Its currently not showing on the MR page.
Is this only for Amex USA? Tried doing it on a UK Amex Gold and it doesn’t show the 40% bonus. When clicking through the link, it gets so far and then fails
Is this offer for usa-based MR only or does it work for uk-based MR.
does this transfer apply to Canadian American Express Gold card?
@ John — US only, sorry.
@ Andrew — Yep, US only.
@ king — No, US only.
@stuart – do you have a link for that double bonus (30,000) for RBC Avion? I can only find the usual, 15,000 bonus offer. Thx
Does US/AA domestic first book into Avios business or first category?
@ Jason — First. It requires triple the miles in domestic markets, unfortunately.
We are sitting on a ton of US and AA miles as well as MR points. Is there any advantage to converting some of our Amex miles to Avios – presumably for short haul award travel in that situation? Is there greater availability or less miles required using Avios?
I’m new to this, but I just searched BA/Executive Club/Spending Avios site and not one of my upcoming 5 US domestic flights in May 2015 has award availability.This would be a great deal if they had seats available when I need them. Looks like I won’t be able to take advantage of this transfer.
@ Chancensam — Keep in mind award space often opens as the departure date approaches, so it can make sense to monitor.
@ Mike — Fewer miles required in many markets, so it could indeed be worthwhile.
Is this for US Amex Membership Rewards only? I do not see any bonus for Canadian Amex Membership Rewards.
@ Vit — Correct, US only.
@ Lucky — thanks for the heads up! Really tempting to transfer at least some MRs.
FYI, BA’s booking engine still has glitches: for example — when searching a roundtrip IAH-DFW-IAH it works fine and pulls up everything on outbound and inbound; searching IAH-DFW one-way also works fine; however, if searching DFW-IAH one-way, it doesn’t pull up any nonstop flights and tries to route through PHX (DFW-PHX-IAH).
How long does it take to transfer Ultimate Rewards or Membership Rewards points to British airways?
@ Chris — It’s typically instant.
I guess this is only for US Amex card holders. When I log into the Canadian AMEX site it only shows the regular conversion 1000 MR points to 1000 Avios points.
@ GG — Correct, it’s US only. Sorry.
Hi, is this offer for US only? does it work for Canada as well?
@ Keith — US only, sorry.
Is this promotion being run in Canada as well? Do you know if Amex will honour it?
@ Tim Daniels — US only, sorry.
Am trying to make a last min decision as to transfer a chunk Amex pts to Avios to get advavtage of the 40% bonus, for a couple of CX Prem econ or Bus tickets later. I tried to at the following flight on both Avios and Asia Miles:
CX 3/19 to 4/9–LAX to HKG–Prem Econ
BA website said 105K Avios and $234
CX website said 72K Asia miles & $?? (can’t get the price since I did not have enough Asia miles to redeem)
Even with the 40% bonus looking like Avios (105/1.4=75K ) is costing more (unless CX’s surcharge is higher? Am I missing something? I thought you pay the same amount of points for the same ticket. Thank you for your advice.
@ CTK — No, every airline has different award rates, so it’s quite normal to see that. In this case it indeed doesn’t makes sense to book through BA.
Hi,
Is the BA award chart change going to affect this at all? Will I still be able to transfer 9,000 points to fly DCA-ORD rt, for instance?
Thanks.
Jake
@ Jake — Yes, that specific redemption isn’t being devalued. The value of shorthaul economy redemptions remains excellent. Here’s more on the changes, including which zones are most impacted:
http://onemileatatime.com/2015/01/28/british-airways-executive-club-program-changes/