Questions and Answers

Lucky,

I am new to using points. I have 330,000 points with Amex and am trying to figure out how to get the most out of my points. I am trying to fly business class to Bangkok from the NYC area. Should I just book the trip through the Amex rewards website, or should I try to transfer the points to one of the “alliance” clubs and book travel that way?
Thanks for your insight!!

Welcome [USER=2087]@katherine[/USER] –
you’ll want to transfer just the amount of points you need to one of the Membership Rewards (MR) transfer partners for the best value. Which one will depend on where you can find reward availability – and remember you don’t have to purchase a round-trip ticket. If you can find availability on your desired dates with one airline going in one direction and with another airline in another direction then you can transfer only the number of points you need to each of the partners.

After you find routes on acceptable dates, see the [URL=’http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/types-miles-points/’]Types of Miles and Points page[/URL] in Lucky’s beginner’s guide which will show you the transfer partners for MRs. Then check out the [URL=’http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/alliances-work/’]How Alliances Work page[/URL] which will explain which airline’s miles can be used to book travel on their partners.

Note that if you transfer MRs to a US-based airline, there will be fees involved depending on how many miles you transfer. But sometimes that’s still the best option.

Hope that helps but if you have further questions, please let us know!