whipwhitaker

All,

I am seeing a 25% transfer bonus from MR to AeroMexico Club Premier, at the ratio 1,000 : 2,000. Just letting you know in case it can be of any help. Valid through February 14.

Since I am flying/collecting on the Star Alliance, is this offer a good deal to turn my MR points into a flight award to Europe/Japan?

Thx!

PointsPanda

Hi Whipwhitaker,

As an expat who lives in Mexico let me run a few things by you

Firstly, Aeromexico is not part of Star alliance, its part of Skyteam alliance and is 49% owned by Delta.

Secondly, Aeromexico collects "kilometers" not miles so generally their redemptions are almost always the same as Delta but 1.6x higher. Therefore the 1000:2000 is really more like 1000:1250. Decent, yes, but not incredible.

Thirdly, after Delta went ahead from owning around 10-15% of Aeromexico to 49% about 1-2 years ago, they did a MASSIVE devaluation of club premier awards and basically got rid of the award chart for all practical purposes. Then to throw salt at the wound they also raised the taxes sky high. I consistently see 30-100% higher taxes on the exact same skyteam award with aeromexico then with delta or AF. As bad as Delta's and AirFrance devaluations has been Aeromexico has been even higher. There used to be hidden sweet spots, where you'd have to deal with the buggy system, but if you could follow the award chart and call them up you could save a lot of points, those days are pretty much gone.

Now don't get me wrong there are some sweet spots but you'll have to look for yourself. Also lots of award availability has a tendency to not show up, so you'll need to check on the Delta or AirFrance search engine first and then call aeromexico to book.

Fourthly, Aeromexico's award search and booking system is the biggest POS you will ever encounter. Most likely you will need to call an agent, have moderate to long wait times, the agent won't speak very good English AND won't understand much about award bookings either, this is not like calling Virgin Atlantic with a 2 minute wait time an agent that knows their stuff. In fact as a matter of policy, until about 1 year ago you couldn't even book online only search online and then you'd have to call to book. These days theoretically you can book online but I wouldn't count on it working, and you'd be taking a tremendous risk by not calling to at least confirm the reservation went through.

Savvy frequent flyers who live in Mexico and aren't going for status, typically credit their Aeromexico flights to Delta, because even if their awards are expensive, at least you can book quickly within minutes. Time is money too.

Maybe if you fly AM a lot and needed to top off some points for a redemption it be worth it, but otherwise I wouldn't bother transferring points in, its just not worth the hassle dealing with Aeromexico, esp now that the deals are dried up.

Also if you plan on flying Aeromexico, both their soft and hard products are woefully outdated (2x2x2 angleflat), and i've seen virtually zero saver delta space on aeromexicos system. You'd be better off transferring into Virgin if you wanna fly Delta layflat across the ocean.

If you're looking to use MR points to Europe and want to fly star alliance, and esp to Japan you should transfer to ANA, roundtrip from USA to Europe at 80-95k RT and USA to Asia from 80-120k RT depending on where you're going. Plus free unlimited changes.

Hope this helps good luck!

p.s. Final negative point, transfers from MR to Aeromexico are amongst the slowest of all Amex partners, could take 1-2 days if your lucky, 1-2 weeks if you're not.