Izws1693

There is currently a promotion with Amex US for 30% off Avios mile transfers. Managed to book first class LON -> NYC for 60,500 amex points and $700 in August. Good business availability as well.

sdsearch

It's not a transfer discount, it's a transfer bonus. In other words, for every 1000 Amex points you transfer during this bonus, you get 1300 Avios instead of 1000 Avios.

Brendan

Good catch, Sdsearch! One can spend 10K Amex to get 13K Avios under this promo. OTOH if it were a 30% discount, 13K Avios would cost 9100 Amex MR points (13K x .7.)
In any case, thank you Lzws1693 for informing us of this promo.

econ

Is there a published end date?

mia

Note that this offer applies only to USA-issued American Express cards enrolled in Membership Rewards.

pgary

Works for Iberia, too. https://global.americanexpress.com/rewards/transfer

WannaTheater

Is this a good deal? In searching for flights, all the British Airways operated flights (business) seem to have huge mileage requirements AND massive taxes.
I did one search for USA domestic (TPA-LAX, one way), and it is 13K Avios + $5.60... but only 8.5K American AAdvantage points. (this is about a $325 fare)

Is there a sweet spot (desirable routes) that I should be looking at?

econ

The AA one might be a better deal, but that Avios redemption isn't that bad either, IMO. I find Avios are a lot easier to earn (due to the CC transfer partners, and especially with these types of bonuses) compared with AA miles.

Pre-covid, I found Avios to be really good value on intra-Asia J/PE (e.g. CX to/from HKG)

Since then, I've used them on short intra-Europe flights on BA, and some AA/AS domestic.

I don't even consider them for TATL/TPAC due to higher redemption rates + surcharges.

friedablass

What type of business class cabin does BA have intra-Europe? Is it the same as other European carriers in which the seats are identical to economy and they leave the middle seat empty? Or do they have a better hard product like domestic USA first?

Separate question, is it entirely impossible to find transatlantic flights in J that do not have excessively high miles and taxes required? Looking for US to Europe, Middle East, and Asia for several different trips over the next year.
Thanks

econ

Correct.

There's other threads out there that discuss this, but I recall seeing posts about IB flights having lower fees. I believe the TPAC partners like CX, JL do as well.

sdsearch

I don't know about Avios, but AA mileage requirements are "dynamic" and can change significantly at any time. Meanwhile, Avios points are not always redeemable for AA flights, they used to be redeemable only for "AAdvantage Saver" fares, but those don't exist anymore at AA, so I'm not sure what the determination point is for when Avios is usable tor AA flights and when it isn't.

Documentation on how to redeem Avios for AA created before AA got rid of redemption charts and thus got rid "AAdvantage Saver" fares is not applicable any more, but I haven't seen updated documentation yet, every site I've looked at that publishes articles about Avios seems to still use that outdated documentation.

In any case, there's no set correlation between AA redemption rates and Avios redemption rates for the same flight at the same time.

The thing is, AA miles can't be transferred from any credit program generally, while Avios points are easy to transfer from several different credit card programs. That's why so many people focus on using Avios for AA, because they don't have AA miles. I have zillions of AA miles, and I've so far used Avios only for intra South Africa British Airways flights, on an airline they owned there.

BA only has massive taxes on transatlantic flights (and maybe some other ultra-long flights, I don't know). That's why I only used my Avios for intra-Africa flights, because those didn't have massive taxes.

srodr

I am thinking of taking advantage of this deal, particularly because I'm sitting on 300k Amex points that can only be transferred to Delta domestically and I wrote off Delta awards as almost useless years ago. I do fly to Madrid pretty often, but usually fly from EWR, and Iberia only flies from JFK and I'd almost rather swim to Europe rather than drive to JFK. But I could probably do a lot with 390k avios points. Would I be able to get any use of my Alaska Gold MVP status if flying on an award issued through Iberia?

mia

Also JetBlue and Hawaiian Airlines, but there is no need to transfer to a domestic program to redeem for domestic flights on AA, AS, DL or UA.

Transfer Membership Rewards points to which airline or hotel program?