London - Japan: which programme?
 

Hi everyone,

Longtime reader, first-time poster here. Nice to finally join the conversation :)

So I'm coming to the end of a 1-year Amex Membership Reward Gold Card and it's time to transfer my 30k MR points to an airline programme. It's not much, but I'd like to use it towards a return flight from London to Japan in Economy next mid-March to mid-April. Either NRT/HND or KIX seem like the obvious choices for destinations, but I'm very happy to fly to smaller airports and/or using random airlines. A changeover isn't an issue, I'd consider two although I'd rather avoid that.

I was wondering if anyone had insights into which airline would be the cheapest, as many are pretty non-transparent as long as one has no points with them. I have identified the following pointers, which hopefully will be useful:

• I currently have ~2000 Avios, ~7000 Emirates miles and ~2000 Miles & More Miles - nothing significant enough to impact on airline choice.
• So far, I have only identified BA as allowing you to pay with different combos of cash and Avios - which is useful when, like me, you don't have all that many points.
• However, BA are beyond terrible for their surcharges and taxes on long-haul flights, so savings are actually quite small even when considering the relatively small number of miles involved.
• JAL, Finnair and other oneworld partners that show up in the BA booking options cost so many more Avios that this also negates their lower surcharges.
• Might Finnair or JAL themselves be sensible places to transfer my MR points?

Any advice much appreciated! :)

Cheers,

Jon

jonostan Welcome to the forum

Have you investigated which airlines you can transfer the Amex MR points to?
But getting the points into a ffp is not the same as getting a awards from that ffp.
My guess is 30,000 MR points will not get you far

Look here
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/infor...help-here.html
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trave...demptions.html

Hi Mewnenzi,

Thanks for your quick reply.

From what I can tell you can transfer MR points to most airlines/ff programmes, no? Or are you referring to the fact that some ffp require you to have made a purchase with their airline before you can transfer MR points to your account?

True. I guess the main question from above is if there are other airlines other than BA where you can pay with different amounts of points + cash. (For example, pay 30k Avios + £300 OR 40k Avios + £200 OR 50k Avios + £100). I've not seen this on other airlines I've used, but if it existed elsewhere it might be a great alternative to the horrendous surcharges when buying reward flights with BA.

Will check out your links, too - thanks again!

Cheers,

Jon

Some airlines allow you to purchase miles from them. It's not cheap, and there may be annual limits, but this can work to top off an account for an award ticket.

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry: BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.1030 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/417)

"From what I can tell you can transfer MR points to most airlines/ff programmes, no?"

No.

MR transfer partners vary from country to country. For example, U.S. MR cannot be transferred to AA, which offers a Europe-Japan one-way Coach award for 35K AAdvantage miles, with no surcharges as long as you stay of BA/IB metal.

What are the available airline transfer partners for your particular Amex MR program? List them, and we can better advise you.

Huh! I didn't realise that - thanks for letting me know.

With Amex UK, I can transfer points to:

Emirates, Alitalia, British Airways, Etihad, Cathay Pacific, Delta, Finnair, Air France/KLM, Iberia, SAS, Singapore Airlines, and Virgin Atlantic; all are 1:1.

No AA there, by the looks of it - shame! :(

Cheers,

Jon

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry: BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.1030 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/417)

"With Amex UK, I can transfer points to:

Emirates, Alitalia, British Airways, Etihad, Cathay Pacific, Delta, Finnair, Air France/KLM, Iberia, SAS, Singapore Airlines, and Virgin Atlantic; all are 1:1."

From that list, you need to investigate which -- if any -- of the FFPs over one-way redemptions with low or no surcharges for a LON-Japan trip. You can forget about redeeming BA Avios because of high surcharges, unless you redeem for Reward Flight Savers between LON and someplace like IST or LCA, and combine that with a paid ticket on another carrier.

Thanks again, guv1976!

I've had a look around and it appears that purely in terms of price, Aeroflot via is by far the cheapest option from pretty much every single major European airport. However, the weird thing is that Aeroflot is quite pricey if you fly only SVO-NRT - more expensive than the indirect flights from the rest of Europe!

AMS-SVO-NRT is cheapest at 371 pounds, which really is a steal for a full-price ticket of that distance - and AMS is dead easy to get to from London as well, so I think I'll settle with that even if I end up not spending my miles - that way they can go on short-haul flights around Europe where BA does reasonable rewards.

Thanks so much again for your help!

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry: BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.1030 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/417)

Of course, LON-AMS is only 4,500 Avios plus 17.5 GBP each way. ;)