We are trying to reserve a flight to Kona from KSAT for my brother’s celebration of life , but can’t seem to find out a reasonable way to pay for the flight with points from Amex. Anyone here got any savvy on this? Thx in advance.

And, we are also going to be a bit later trying to do the same for a flight to Dublin, Ireland using same payment method. TIA, Mike

Welcome to Flyertalk and sorry to hear about your loss.

The most reliable way is to book via Amex travel at 1cpp. You can also look at booking via BA with Avios, although availability is rare.

Can you tell us your desired date(s) of travel, and the current cash cost for your flights? That will help to figure out whether it makes sense to transfer your MR points to a frequent-flyer program and attempt to get award tickets.

Yessir! We have been checking with American, Delta Airlines. The best fare round trip is with American at about 500.00. Delta was a bit more than that and has a bag fee attached which has not been looked at. Flight is only about three weeks out on 1/31 which is why we are getting a bit antsy! TIA, Mike

The more current route is Amex --> Hawaiian --> Alaska, tends to be much better than Avios redemptions with the recent devaluations.

AA charges for checked bags, too on that route -- unless one of the passengers holds a qualifying AA credit card, or has elite status in the AAdvantage program or in one of the other oneworld frequent-flyer programs. Checked bags are free on Southwest, but it looks like departures on January 31 would require two connections from SAT to KOA.

At this point, if you really want to use your Amex points, I don't think that you will do better than buying your tickets through Amex travel, and paying with your points.

Note: Since you are a new member of FlyerTalk, be aware that you are limited to just five posts during your first 24 hours.

Agreed, however I went that way for a last minute transfer, setting up a new Hawaiian account, and it took over 2 days and several calls to Amex to get my accounts linked, and in that time the space disappeared. I did not know that OP didn't need to travel immediately when posting, hence stating the quickest setup and transfer time paths.

Oh interesting. My Hawaiian account setup/linking was instant through Amex. Was able to do the Amex > Hawaiian > Alaska transfer all in the span of minutes a few months ago. Was it a name discrepancy or they couldn't figure out what the issue was?

This was in mid-December - No name discrepancy, they just needed to verify / push it through. I think it was because it was a brand new account, there can be issues due to fraud. As always, ymmv, this is just the experience I had.

The AMEX -> Hawaiian -> Alaska -> AA redemption is great for those with AMEX points. But be advised, I just noticed an alert on the AMEX redemption screen that as of 6/30/25, transfers from AMEX - Hawaiian will no longer be available.

Friendly PSA - there's less than 48 hours left to launder some AMEX points into Hawaiian (and then transfer to Alaska) if you want to use them for AA (or any OneWorld) redemption!

wow, that’s unfortunate. Maybe a function of Hawaiian joining OW? Amex has become more and more oriented to Skyteam

Alliance doesn't matter there. AS doesn't want Amex transfers, for whatever reason (the BofA deal prohibits it? Amex pays too low of a price for HA miles? AS would prefer using redemptions to Hawaii to sell BofA cards?)

Out of Amex's transfer partners, I count 4 SkyTeam, 4 Star, and 5 oneWorld (not counting HA, and that becomes 4 as well if you have IAG as one airline comparable to AFKL).