Originally Posted by
Stephenk19
Hi Amex MR Gurus,
Looking for advice on the best use of close to 240,000 MR points (in my wife and my accounts).
I have seen the various options for transferring points to airlines and hotels through Amex MR but not overly attracted to any of them.
The main reason being we have a large number of UA miles that can be used on *A carriers and BA, one of the transfer partners not *A which interests me, to my understanding can charge high fuel surcharges on many routes. Asia miles is also somewhat appealing, but I think it is a ratio of 1.0:0.75 so not great.
I have been debating transferring all the MR points to SPG points, then to AA with the 25% bonus they have in place to transfer from SPG to an airline. I believe the MR to SPG ratio is 2:1 so we would lose a decent number of points, but would then grab some back with the transfer to AA.
I have close to 220,000 AA miles and these seem to be some of the best currency for use on OneWorld partners so the idea of building this balance (despite the transfer loss) is appealing to me at the moment.
Is this a crazy waste of points to do this? Any inputs appreciated
Steve
Transferring MR points through SPG to get to an airline is a fairly painful way to go, though if you are absolutely set on using MR points for oneworld redemptions it may be the best option available to you. Don't write off BA completely though; they can be very valuable for short-haul redemptions thanks to awards starting as low as a few thousand miles on short routes, and though they do charge high fuel surcharges, those vary by market and are not always as painful as they are in the US-Europe market.
It's also worth thinking about whether oneworld is an absolute must for you -- you don't say what you're thinking of redeeming for, but there may be other options that are equally good. For example if you want to redeem for Cathay Pacific, you could consider instead transferring MR points to Singapore and redeeming for a similarly luxurious trip on SQ (and, SQ does not give its partners access to its long-haul premium class awards, so your UA miles would not help there).
In another example you want to redeem for North America-Europe premium class travel, Delta miles can actually be quite useful, as they have access to several good partners (Virgin Atlantic, KLM, Alitalia and Delta all have very good transatlantic business class products), while most oneworld TATL awards are going to involve BA, where you'll have to pay fuel surcharges with either BA or AA miles. (If you do transfer to Delta, be aware that Delta will charge fuel surcharges for tickets originating in Europe, but you can reduce the pain of that by booking two one-way tickets, and the return ticket originating in the US will not have fuel surcharges.)
(Not clear what country your MR account is in, but if it's a US account then the transfer to SPG is 3:1; I believe in some other countries you do get 2:1.)