Hello. I gotta say first that not only I'm new on this forum, but also quite inexperienced in this whole FF business. I recently received my 25K miles for signing up with Amex Green Reward card. I want to fly by AA from NYC to Rio sometime this summer, however AA is not on of their partners (I want to fly with AA because I already have some miles with them). So I've been thinking of joining one of the following:

Best Western Gold Crown Club� or
Starwood Preferred Guest�.

The question is: if I transfer the points into Starwood or Gold Crown account, can I then use them to book a flight with AA? Also if anyone has other suggetions I'd appreciate them very, very much

Sounds like you want to redeem the 25000 miles for a free trip. If you do that, most likely the flight will not earn any miles... so flying on AA may not be that important.

Any movement of miles/points usually dramatically reduces their value... so that is usually a last resort unless you want to top off for an award.

William

Welcome to FT!

I'm probably not the best person to answer your question, since I don't fly AA, am not active in Best Western, and don't know about the 25k Amex Green Card bonus. I do belong to AMEX Membership Rewards and SPG.

Transfering miles or points to another account usually devalues them A LOT. 999 MR points = 333 Starpoints. 20,000 Starpoints = 25,000 AA miles. You will have less than 8,500 AA miles if you do the double transfer. How many miles do you have in AA? A roundtrip ticket to Rio from NYC will cost over 35,000 miles on any airline. 40,000 on AA PlanAAhead off-peak coach.

The best advice is to read this BB, check the archives, use the search tool, and read AA's and "other airlines who fly to Rio" websites. Check the other airlines on the MR awards list, perhaps they have better options. Remember to plan carefully, most transfers cannot be reversed.

Good luck!

Continental(an MR transfer partner) flys from NY (Newark having the best connection) to Rio for 35k points.

Unless you just need a few miles on AA to top off an acct, I definately would not recommend using BW or *wood to pass thru the points. You just loose too much in the conversion factors. Better to just wait for your MR point balance to grow (ie: spend, spend, spend!!!!).

Thanks everyone for your responses. Yes, getting a free ticket is the plan. The thing is, I do have over 35K MR points but my buddy doesn't (only 25K), but we both have some AA miles, so this is the reason I'd rather use AA vs Continental. However, considering there is 3:1 transfer for Starwood I can clearly see it's not an option. I guess we'll need to earn remaining 10K on Continental - fast Thanks again.