American Express Membership Rewards - Membership Rewards (UK) & British Airways

Does anyone know if you can transfer your MR's to BA's exec club?

I am a new platinum charge customer and I was surprised that it wasn't in the online MR info - primarily because Amex UK of course have the BA Amex cards.

So does anyone know if you can call them to make a transfer, pretty much just because of the card fee I feel they should be able to do this for plat and centurion members.

If this isn't possible, I noticed that you can transfer to Priority Club and then onto BA. Anyone had experience with this? i.e. do you get a good transfer rate? I would just hate to have to do this just to simply transfer to BA via a 3rd-party who I’ve never used before.

you can't transfer MR direct to BA however with a UK Platinum you can get the BA Amex for free and earn the miles that way.

I guess that begs the question 'why ge the platinum card in the first place?'

Free BA Amex card (£85)
Travel Insurance including NA car hire (£75-£400 depending on how long you hire a car for!)
Priority Pass (£150?)
BMI Lounge Access (worth £10 a shot? - Better than Servicair - at least in EDI)

Don't forget the Platinum card has pretty good travel insurance packages. I top it up with the £85 Centuurion option which covers the whole family for everything imaginable.

We keep hoping that an airline 'loses' a suitcase for a day to get the £750 benefit!

So I guess its better to switch my Gold Credit Card to the BA card (which is free with the Plat Charge), and concentrate my spending on their with the Plat Charge kept for its benifits?

I take it getting 1.5 miles per £1 would be better than any other transfer to another airline program anyway?

Another way to do it would be to sign up with prioritypass.com (Intercontentail hotel group; holiday inn, corwne plaza, etc.), transfer points to them from MR, which you can then transfer on to BA.

Aparantly you get 25,000 miles for every 10,000 points. MR to prioriy pass is 3 MR points for 4 pp points - so that looks like another way of doing it. I just need to decided which is best as I doubt I would be using any of their hotels anytime soon and would just be using the card as a 3rd-party points transfer, which I doubt they would like if they notice!

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by matthewuk:
you can't transfer MR direct to BA however with a UK Platinum you can get the BA Amex for free and earn the miles that way.

I guess that begs the question 'why ge the platinum card in the first place?'

Free BA Amex card (£85)
Travel Insurance including NA car hire (£75-£400 depending on how long you hire a car for!)
Priority Pass (£150?)
BMI Lounge Access (worth £10 a shot? - Better than Servicair - at least in EDI)</font>

The unlimited priority pass that comes with the Amex Platinum card currently costs approx £250 by itself. It's a dubious benefit if you already pay to sit (or lie) up front though.

I wasn't aware that a free BA credit card was one of the benefits though (it certainly doesn't appear in the literature).

Regards
I

The free BA card isn;t in the Platinum literature (maybe it should be - any Amex lurkers?)

It is highlighted in the BA Amex Ts and Cc in the fee section.

I'm interested in this MR to Priority Club to BA Miles transfer - what's the effective MR to BA Miles exchange rate?

(Finally don;t forget with the BA Card the real perk is every £15k spend, you double the value of your miles as you get a two for one voucher - one per year - assumes you usually travel with a companion)

Now let me see (done half of this once already to top my PC points up for an extra night in an Intercon).... The transfer rate for MR to PC is 3MR = 4PC. So, we'll keep it simple (I'm quite innumerate) and use an example of 3000 MR points = 4000 PC points. Not bad, but if I have a prolonged stay in a 6C hotel other in Intercontinental, I get 100 of these points for every 10USD I spend so not that good.

The exchange rate from Priority Club to BA is 10000 PC points = 2500 miles. Not a good deal at all. Compared to this, A BA Amex card with 1.5 miles per UKP spent is something of a steal (especially if the card is free)

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by matthewuk:
It is highlighted in the BA Amex Ts and Cc in the fee section.

I'm interested in this MR to Priority Club to BA Miles transfer - what's the effective MR to BA Miles exchange rate?
</font>

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by matthewuk:
(Finally don;t forget with the BA Card the real perk is every £15k spend, you double the value of your miles as you get a two for one voucher - one per year - assumes you usually travel with a companion)</font>

I think that matthewuk has hit the nail on the head here. The best perk is the two for one offer. Effectively can double your miles per £ to 3BA miles per £1 normally and 6 BA Miles per £1 when purchasing a BA fare. You don't get that often!

So the MR:BA via PC ratio is effectively 3:1?

You can do better with starwood: 2000&gt;1000&gt;1000 i.e. 2:1.

I totally agree with the posts above, if you are primarily interested in BA miles then the Premium Plus BA Card wipes the floor with all the others. The mile earning ration combined with the partner voucher at £15K spend is unbeatable. In fact, so much do I love this card that I ditched Centurion in favour of it nearly 2 years ago...

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Bond Boy:
I think that matthewuk has hit the nail on the head here. The best perk is the two for one offer. Effectively can double your miles per £ to 3BA miles per £1 normally and 6 BA Miles per £1 when purchasing a BA fare. You don't get that often!</font>

Ahh, now we're talking. Collecting miles at that kind of rate would put me in the long haul upgrade bracket with my miles quite quickly.

Looks like come confusion between Priority Pass (airport lounge access) and Priority Club (Holiday Inn + I-C etc points/miles earning).

PP is included in AX Plat and Cent, otherwise costs money. PC is free.

Now that would be a perk being able to get a two for one UPGRADE AWARD voucher (post July 1st EC changes)

Unfortunately I'm fairly sure the voucher will stay as two for one award tickets.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by matthewuk:
Now that would be a perk being able to get a two for one UPGRADE AWARD voucher (post July 1st EC changes)

Unfortunately I'm fairly sure the voucher will stay as two for one award tickets.

</font>

In fact it is a 2-1 upgrade voucher because 100K miles will get 2 x CW instead of 2 x WT to USA .. effectively an upgrade from WT to CW, and long may it last!

The 2 for 1 voucher is GREAT. I use it every year fo an additional F ticket so 150k gets me 2 tixs to the US. I can't believe some people use them for LHR-CDG etc.... http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/frown.gif

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by CT-UK:
The 2 for 1 voucher is GREAT. I use it every year fo an additional F ticket so 150k gets me 2 tixs to the US. I can't believe some people use them for LHR-CDG etc.... http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/frown.gif</font>

Probably as many people cannot earn 150K miles a year but those lucky enough to do so certainly win hands down.

LON-CDG Y is about 40GBP + Taxes so people redeeming points/voucher for this must really cheer Amex up.

Out of interest does anybody know who funds the BA Miles (I assume Amex given the high retailer charges) and the Voucher (I assume BA)?