bmotion,

Welcome to FT.

First and foremost, you will not be able to transfer from Continental or United to Skywards... however, as they are partners, you could use miles on those programmes to redeem awards on Emirates.

In my opinion, your best option would be to create an SPG (www.spg.com) account. You can transfer your MR points to SPG at the conversion rate of 1,000 AmEx MR points = 333 SPG Points. In your case, this would net 199,800 SPG points.

Those SPG points can be converted to Emirates points at the 1:1 ratio, or to United/Continental at the ratio of 2:1 (2 SPG for 1 mile). You also get a 5k bonus if transferring in increments of 20k, so if you can buy 200 points (or get a SPG AmEx if you live in the US), you can transfer 200k SPG points into 250k Emirates miles.

I hope this helps; feel free to PM me if you have any questions, and good luck.

AAmerican_in_London