Buying parents first/business tickets with Amex points
 

I have somewhere around 150,000 Amex points(platinum bonus) and am hoping to send a few members of my family on a trip somewhere from the US east coast on a first class flight. I would be willing to go business if it was a nice business class(lay flat seats, etc) as well. Any suggestions for the best value? I have no real ideas, probably europe is the best bet, but I guess asia is feasible too. The flights would probably be from DC, or Orlando/miami

Are there any sweet spots for AMEX redemptions that would allow me to pull this off? I was looking at avios but I'm fairly clueless.
If I had to find another signup bonus somewhere to get more miles I might be willing to do that, but I was hoping this would be enough. Any thoughts would be great, thanks!

I hate to be discouraging, but 150K Amex points is enough to get a a few folks back and forth to Europe in business class, not to mention first class. Plus there is the challenge of securing a three or four award seats on the same flights.

If you want to pursue this further, though, one route to go is to focus on getting bonuses through the various credit cards that can in turn be converted into Singapore Air Krisflyer miles. Your Amex points can be used for this, as can Chase ultimate reward points, Citi thank you points and Starwood Amex (which are different from the regular Amex membership reward) points. The appropriate threads in the credit card forums are places to learn more about these options.

Good luck!

As Thunderhead said, 150,000 points is really not very much to go on. For example, if you were to transfer to Air Canada, you'd need 90,000 points for a single business class ticket to Europe from the US. First class would be 125,000 points.

Avios, incidentally would not be a very good strategy as BA tacks on significant surcharges.

what about a decent business/first class to italy from the US east coast?
have 150k+ Amex points
somewhere between 80-100k avios
at the very least I think I'll be ok with business first one way and economy on the way back, but I'd rather round trip.
I thought I remembered seeing Alitalia round trip business being reasonable?

Alitalia used to be a low price for biz round trip to Europe at 80k but it's 100k now. And still ~$850 pp in fuel surcharges... You may can make this happen now that you mention the Avios. Do you have an Iberia Avios account that has been open for > 90 days? If so, you could move the BA Avios to IB Avios, and IB has a pretty nice award chart for business class flights on IB. For example, JFK or BOS to MAD is 50k one way on peak dates and 34k on off-peak. ORD or MIA to MAD is 62.5k peak or 42.5k off-peak. And as long as you avoid the winter holiday season and mid-June through Labor Day, most dates are off peak. Your parents could continue on from Madrid to somewhere else in Europe for pretty cheap - economy one ways range from 4.5k to 11k depending on distance and peak/off-peak.

http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.c...m-bright-spot/

I believe FlyingBlue runs promos on various routes each month in both Y and J. If you are flexible with US gateways you might be able to snag one of those.

I think they charge the same prices as DL saver TATL (aka 62.5k OW before the promo discount)

Thank you for your replies. It looks like I'll be SO close to being able to get 3 round trip tickets from miami to madrid in business, argh. Still a possibility though.

For those flyingblue promos, where do I find those? I didnt see them listed in the forum here anywhere.
Thanks

Here is the link to the current promos for travel between 1 April and 31 May.

https://www.flyingblue.com/promo-awards.html

As this post is specific to using MR points, we'll relocate this to the AMEX forum.

~beckoa, co-moderator Information Desk

I'm pretty sure that 42.5k MIA to MAD rate posted above is one-way. So you don't even have enough for two round-trips.