Bonus Avios on transfers from from AmEx Membership Rewards

The American Express / British Airways Avios transfer bonus is back. A promo like this runs once or twice a year, it seems. Last time it was a 50% bonus on tansfers; this time around the pair are offering a 40% bonus for US customers transferring Membership Rewards points to Avios. The promo is set to run through September 27, 2012.

This promotion doesn’t suddenly make Avios an awesome redemption value across the board. That said, they do have their purpose in the points ecosystem (Check out a discussion of them in episode 6 of the PointsHoarder podcast) and getting 40% more of them for free is not such a bad deal.

Another advantage of this promotion is that the bonus points are built in to the transfer ratio rather than credited at some point after the fact. Combine that with the instant transfer timing from AmEx to Avios and it means actually booking an award with the bonus points is pretty easy to do.

Oh, and if you’re curious just how many Avios an itinerary will cost, something that their site does a horrible job of displaying when there are connections involved, check out the Avios Redemption Calculator. It will show prices across various single connection itineraries for most valid city pairs.

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4 Comments

Hi Seth, I am hoping you or someone responds. I have been trying to do this transfer all day today and keep getting an error from Amex :
“We apologize for the inconvenience, the system is currently unavailable. Please try your request again by refreshing the page.”

Is it just me or are others seeing this?

Thanks! Looking forward to meeting you at FFU in Dec.
Greg

Seth says:

29 August 2012 at 3:12 pm

I haven’t yet tried this time around, Greg, so I cannot say for sure. If it is urgent I’d say call it in and see what they say on the phone. Otherwise maybe try again tomorrow.