Transfer AMEX MR Points To British Airways And Get A 50% Bonus! Fly Round-Trip Domestic For Less Than 17,000 Points Or To Hawaii For Less Than 24,000 Points!

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Update: Today is the last day for this promotion!

Originally posted on 06/01:

Related posts:
Transfer AMEX Points To Delta And Get A 50% Bonus! Transfer At Least 100,000 Points And Get 25,000 Elite Miles!

Transfer 100,000+ AMEX Points To Delta And Get A 40% Bonus (for non first-time transfers)

Membership Rewards Offer Linky

Just hover over “British Airways” and you should see the 50% bonus offer.

It says that you will only receive the 50% bonus on your first transfer to BA that occurs between 06/01/11 and 07/31/11, however when they ran a 40% promo earlier this year it also said that it would would only work on the first transfer and yet it worked on all transfers.

Now here’s the thing with BA miles, they do collect fuel surcharges when you travel on most carriers. If you want to travel on BA those fuel surcharges can be quite heavy, especially on long-haul and on connecting flights. But you don’t have to travel on BA.

If you redeem for domestic tickets on Oneworld Alliance partner AA, then it can be a pretty good as they won’t charge a fuel surcharge for that and BA does not charge an award expedite fee.  When you book an AA ticket within AA miles within 21 days of departure you pay a $50-$100 expedite fee. When you book an AA flight with BA miles you don’t pay that fee.

-17,000 AMEX points would transfer into 25,500 BA miles which is more than the 25K miles required for an AA round-trip domestic ticket!

-24,000 AMEX points would transfer into 36,000 BA miles, which is more than the 35K miles required for an AA round-trip ticket from the US48 to Hawaii!  Tax on that ticket to one of my favorite places in the world is just $5!

-27,000 AMEX points would transfer into 40,500 BA miles, which is more than the 40K miles required for an AA or a LAN round-trip ticket from the US48 to South America.  Great deal for travel to Peru, Brazil, or Argentina!

-34,000 AMEX points would transfer into 51,000 BA miles, which is more then the 50K miles required for a Cathay Pacific round-trip ticket to Hong Kong or China.

-44,000 AMEX points would transfer into 66,000 BA miles, which is more then the 65K miles required for a BA flight to Israel.  Beware that redeeming BA miles for a trans-atlantic flight will mean heavy surcharges.  You may be able to limit part of those surcharges by flying other OneWorld airlines, like Iberia or Malev.

Business class is double the coach miles and first is triple the coach miles.
A Cathay Pacific First Class (150,000 miles) ticket may have $250 in fees, but that’s still not bad on a ticket that sells for a whopping $18,000 normally!

BA allows one-way ticket awards at half the miles of a round-trip. While AA doesn’t generally allow stopovers on any awards anymore using AA miles (except at the north american gateway city of an international award) You can use BA miles even while traveling on AA to take an unlimited amount of free stopovers, even on a one-way ticket! You can theoretically fly from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, stay there for a couple nights, then to Dallas for a few nights, onto Chicago for a few nights, and Cleveland for a few nights before finally flying to New York. And you can book that whole one-way ticket for just 12,500 miles and $10 tax!
A stopover ticket like this would have to be booked over the phone. You can check award availability on AA.com. BA will have access to the same sAAver awards that AA.com shows availability for.

BA is part of the OneWorld alliance so you can also redeem to fly on OneWorld airlines (American Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Finnair, Iberia, JAL, LAN, Malev, Qantas, Royal Jordanian, and S7 Airlines) and they also have non-alliance partners like Aer Lingus, Alaska, and Kingfisher.

You can book some partner travel online but they don’t make it easy, you will probably need to book over the phone at 800-452-1201

Fuel surcharges are worse on some airlines than others.  While flying on BA can be very expensive you can fly on some partner airlines for much smaller fuel surcharges.

They do not currently charge fuel surcharges for travel on AA unless it’s a trans-atlantic flight. They also don’t charge fuel surcharges for travel on LAN.

BA allows families to pool miles together into a “household account.” Up to 6 people at the same address can pool their miles together!

BA has a number of award charts, here are links to them:

BA Award Chart: Traveling on BA only

BA Award Chart: Traveling on one partner only

BA Award Chart: Traveling on BA and one partner

BA Award Chart: Traveling On Multiple Carriers Round The World Chart

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70 Comments On "Transfer AMEX MR Points To British Airways And Get A 50% Bonus! Fly Round-Trip Domestic For Less Than 17,000 Points Or To Hawaii For Less Than 24,000 Points!"

All opinions expressed below are user generated and the opinions aren’t provided, reviewed or endorsed by any advertiser or DansDeals.

fred

@dan:

Any limit how many you can transfer

MIMI

Is it crazy to transfer my Amex points over to BA even if I don’t plan on taking a trip now? My main points are already there. Second highest is with AA. Amex I only have about 40K points.
Thanks.

Sam

Which AMEX card should I open to get points for this promo?
Will I get the points by July 31st?

Vuch

dan where do you recommend transferring amex points for israel? I read going to israel with amex points. But I still didnt conclude which airline..

Dan

@fred:
No limit!

@MIMI:
What do you want to do with your points?

@Sam:
All of them 😀
You can apply for 2 or 3 cards at the same time using multiple internet browsers and only get 1 credit hit.
I did the Platinum card and the Premier Rewards Gold simultaneously and only got 1 credit hit.

Then I called up AMEX using the codes found in the credit card board on the DansDeals forums and got 100,000 amex points for the platinum card and 75,000 amex points for the gold card.
175,000 total points (or 262,500 BA miles with the 50% bonus).
You can still apply for those cards and get those offers!

I got the points on both those cards within 2 days of meeting the $1,000 spending thresholds. And I’ve had both of those cards in the past…

@Vuch:
There is no clear-cut conclusion, but I would say Continental is the safest bet.

Brian

Dan, I have 50,000 MR points: Should i transfer to BA, AA, or Delta? I will mostly use them for US domestic tickets. What program has the best low availability?

jac

does amex ever offer transfer bonuses to ana?

Dan

@Brian:
I would say transfer to BA with this promo. You’ll have enough for 3 domestic tickets on AA.

@jac:
Not that I’ve seen.

c

dan where is the link for the premier gold card

Joe S

What’s the deal with using BA miles for AA flights. You said I can fly to a bunch of cities on one ticket. Do they all have to be in order? What if I want to fly from NY to Miami, then LA, then Vegas, then Boston. Can I do all that on 1 one-way ticket?

Anonymous

How should book a nyc-tlv ticket??

Avi

Maybe I made a huge error. I used the free companion ticket using miles from BA, after spending 30K to book 2 1st class tix to Paris. $1500 in taxes and fees between the 2 tickets! Any way I could have avoided that? I have lots of AA,SPG, AMEX and united miles too, but I want to use the companion ticket before it expires next March…

fan of dan

Hi dan when you say that a few credit card applications at the same time will only be one hit do you mean at the same second? Also if I do one application on comp and other on ipad will it have the same effect in being only one pull?

Vuch

Thanks dan are there ever any amex promos with Continental? also what is the fuel surcharge to israel usually. I mean are we talking about 300+?

chaim

Hi Dan.

I have a good amount of BA and AA miles. I want to travel to Hawaii with my wife over July 4th weekend. Do you know how or who I should call to get the 35000 miles rate per ticket.

Thank you in advance for your help

Dan

@c:
Look at the very top of this post for those links.

@Joe S:
They likely need to be “along the way.” So that would be a round-trip ticket.

@Anonymous:
BA.com or call them.

@Avi:
The companion ticket needs to be used on BA, which means heavy fuel surcharges.

@fan of dan:
Try to do it within a minute or so.
You can use different computers if you want instead of different browsers on the same computer.

@Vuch:
There hasn’t been a Continental promo in many years. Continental mils are very valuable-they don’t need to make a promo to get people to transfer to them.

Yes, the fuel surcharges to Israel on BA will definitely be more than $300. As opposed to using Continental miles and paying $50 tax and no surcharges.

@chaim:
Search on AA.com for sAAver tickets. BA has access to the same availability over the phone.

schneur

hey dan, does this work even with the canadian card?

the regular transfer rate to BA with canadian MR points is 1-.75

Hash

Can I use book on a partner airline with my BA miles with stopovers when flying overseas, say the far east? Or does this unlimited stopover shtick work only on AA in the US?

Dan

@schneur:
No idea, sorry.

@Hash:
Yes, you can do stopovers overseas as well!

yossi

is there a fuel surcharge using BA MILES to book JFK-HKG business class? When I use AA miles there isnt any fuel charge. Thanks

Leiby

Hey Dan,

When you talk about heavy fuel surcharges for BA tickets to international destinations, what do you call heavy, $200? $400?

Thanks

danfan

i also didnt really understand how thefew stopovers work they usaly only give you one stopove?

jj

are the econemy fuel charges lower?

dan-da-man

could you explain how you can do more then one stop per trip? when i called up they said you could stop as long as you want on a stopover but there is usually only one stopover per destination?

schneur

I received the ba card, if I book aa with ba miles will I get a free checked bag or do I need to have a aa card?

Dans

@Dan:

Hi Dan

You wrote got 100,000 amex points for the platinum card and 75,000 amex points for the gold card.
175,000 total points (or 262,500 BA miles with the 50% bonus)

Were can I get the offer code for the platinum 100k and for the gold 75k

Thanks very much

leib

Were can we get a code for 100k platinum card points?

Thanks

Rivka

Help us, Would love the codes to call amex for the 100,000 and 75,000 rewards.
Also, how many amex points do you need for overseas travel to europe (London, Belgium, France)
Thanks

Dan

@yossi:
It depends on the airline you are flying on.

@Leiby:
It depends on many factors. Search for award flights on BA.com and it will tell you the surcharge after you select the flights.

@danfan:
You need to do it over the phone.

@jj:
Yes, slightly.

@dan-da-man:
You can get many more than 1, just ask for it nonchalantly…

@schneur:
Neither the AA nor BA cards get you additional free bags.

@Dans:
http://www.dansdeals.com/forums/index.php?topic=7057
http://www.dansdeals.com/forums/index.php?topic=6918
http://www.dansdeals.com/forums/index.php?topic=7882

dan-da-man

when you request more then one stopover, could you request any city as a additional stopover even if its not really on the way?

Motti

Dan,

I get this message when I open the link:

The ability to transfer points to a frequent flier or frequent guest program is not available in the Membership Rewards Express(R) program.

Dan

@dan-da-man:
Can’t hurt to try, but the odds are against you.

@Motti:
Then you don’t have any Gold or Platinum cards active.
See the links at the top of those post to get a Gold or Platinum card and then you’ll be able to transfer points to airline miles.

Motti

Would a Business Gold card work?

Dan

@Motti:
Yes, as long as it’s a charge card with Membership Rewards points.

Anon

Hi can i transfer starwood points? or can i transfer something else into AMEX points to than transfer.. like AA or continental??

Dan

@Anon:
No, nothing transfers into AMEX points.
You can open up one of their charge cards for points or you can borrow or buy points from AMEX if you have an AMEX charge card.

Anon

@Dan:

how do i borrow points?

ales gut

Dan what is the fuel surcharge to israel from nyc- On BA it keeps on giving me errors when trying to search/book a flight.

Gabbai

Shame the BA offer only just came up. I transferred 200,000 MR miles to Delta on 5/31, also getting a 50% bonus but the BA miles are worth more.

dan-da-man

I’m sorry for being such a nudnick but I’m missing something.you wrote” You can theoretically fly from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, stay there for a couple nights, then to Dallas for a few nights, onto Chicago for a few nights, and Cleveland for a few nights before finally flying to New York. And you can book that whole one-way ticket for just 12,500 miles and $10 tax” but i don’t understand how you do this if they usually don’t give you more then 1 or 2 stopovers on the way if you type in you want to go from LA to NY

Dan

@Anon:
You can do it on amex’s website or call them up.

@ales gut:
It depends on the class of service and the airline you fly on. It will be more than $300 for sure.

@Gabbai:
That’s life! Do what I do-keep opening more cards and get more miles!

@dan-da-man:
Pick up the phone and call them!

keep in mind

Just giving the heads up that if your planning on converting your amex points to ba just to get the 50% bonus and sell them …you’ll end up losing as ba points are worth much much less than amex points.

LohMaveeen

@keep in mind — i think most people get points to use them in the way that best suits their needs in the program that they want

Lora

Do BA reward miles ever expire? Or do you have to take a trip on them once a year for example? If you live in Cleveland and don’t have firm plans to go to where AA goes would you transfer the miles to BA or Continental? Is AA the only partner of BA that flies from Cleveland? Why are continental miles so much more valuable? THANK YOU

Monkey

Has any one got Amex to overnight them a card after approval?

Dan man

Dan, does Ana charge fuel surcharge to italy with lufthanza ? also what should be my preference booking is it CO>Ana?

dk

dan, it says 65k to russia, wich is only 44k amex mr points, what airline would u chose to fly to russia (moscow) to avoid extra fee’s? also would you buy the whole thing on points or part pay to use the miles elsewhere? i only got the amex gold 75k no platinum.. so if this could mean a ticket to russia for 365 and a free ticket to israel with remaining points,. that’s $365 for about $2000 worth of tickets at current price?…

mbi

When redeeming BA miles for an international flight on AA, they do charge you a fuel surcharge. The no fuel surcharge on AA is for domestic only flights

Leah

HELP plrase tell me where Hovered around BA could not find option to transfer AA miles toBA

Avidan

Dan, I have been following your site and purchased many items. Thank you very much, I am however very new and unexperienced with this ‘point’ thing, I just read about it now and then on your site, so you are the only expert I know regarding this.

I have a little over 115,572 points on my platinum amex, with available 60,000 points advance. I want to go at the end of this month to Israel with my wife (her first time) from Miami. What do you recommend? I got a quote on Iberia’s direct website for a little over $3,000 (including all fees/taxes) on American Express website it was about $600 more.

What is the best option to use my points to get the cheapest deal and maybe even an upgrade?

Yossi

To clarify my question:
If I use BA to book on AA to fly business JFK-HKG, is there a fuel surcharge? When I kook using AA directly (using AA miles) there isnt any fuel surcharge. Thanks!

Yitzi

@avidan
check out the forums, there are many experts there that will be able to help u.

MIKE

Dan, (or anyone else)pls help! I transfered 100k and then 50k amex points to delta using the 50% bonus promotion (into 2 different accounts and then combined them) and also got 25k x2 MQM bonus miles which made me a gold member. now several month later delta took away my 75k miles (from the 50k that i transfered) and the 25k MQMmiles. I called and spoke to a superviser (i explained that even if they take away the MQM miles they have no right to take away my reg 75k or at least 50k miles or at the very least refund my amex account) who said that she can’t help me and the only way to do something is open an inquiry on-line but i cant spk to anyone. when I tried to argue with her she slamed the phone on me. PLS ADVISE!
Also i dont mean to sound crazy but is there anyone to complain to about this ie FAA or something.

Avidan

Yitzi, what forums? Do you have a link?

Avidan

nevermind. blonde moment.

Meir

wat if aa only has sAAver one way and the way back is an AAnytime fare? how would BA price the ticket??

deltacptn

if I transfer amex from my us based amex account, to a ba account based in the uk will i still get the bonus?

If not by changing the address to us in the ba profile will i?

mendy

do you think I would be able to book a one way from ny to miami to las vegas to LA?

est

ive got 200,000 BA points and 50,000 MR points . I need a round trip to uman sept 26 – oct 2, from jfk would this be an option for me? (i also have 50,000 starwood and 150,000 A”A, and some continental)

eli

Dan, I have 200k miles on BA. I tried using them to book a flight rt to London. They want an additional $558 per person in taxes and fees. I can buy the flight with taxes and fees for $669. What do I do?

Dan

@eli:
Exactly why I said it’s not a good idea to use these miles for travel on BA and probably not a good idea to use them for trans-atlantic travel at all.

Jake

Dan,

I currently have like 30k miles just sitting in my amex blue sky acount and for some reason it wont let me transfer them over to my BA account (where I have over 150k, mostly thanks to you! 🙂 )

Each time I try doing the transfer I either get “We apologize for the inconvenience, the system is currently unavailable. Please try your request in an hour. If you require assistance please call Membership Rewards Customer Service at 1-866-325-3457.” or otherwise it another message saying something about my card/points not being eligible???

” We’re sorry. Your current Card(s) is not eligible for the Membership Rewards® program. To see a list of eligible Cards, please click here. ” Yet when I do click it shows Blue Sky card as being eligible for “Membership Rewards Express”

Sorry if this sounds confusing as I obviously am very confused, do I not know something about Blue sky points? (I had no problem transferring my Amex gold points) any help or advice would be appreciated!

Thanks!

joe

@Jake: if u still have the gold card open it should work

Jake

Sadly I don’t 🙁

Does this mean the points I have from Blue Sky are a different category of points?

anon

dan. do u think i can still get tickets to israel for sukkos with british airways?

levi

@MIKE: you have to call again and ask them for an inquiry and to open a case, and you’ll get back your points

Andrew

As per TPG, the 50% transfer bonus is still working as of 8/1. I just used it a few minutes ago for my second transfer during the promotion.

Alex

Dan, I just wanted to book a Cathay Pacific economy flight from JFK to Hong Kong with 50,000 of my BA miles, but BA wanted $480 in taxes and fuel charges. Is there a different number to call besides the BA number for less of those charges?
Also, business wasn’t available even though the date is more than 2 months in advance. Does that make sense? Any advice please?
Thank you.

Dan

@Alex:
Did you try booking online?
You can also check availability on Cathay flights from LAX, ORD, SFO, YVR, and YYZ.
Also they have better First class availability than business, and their first class is excellent.

Alex

@Dan: Online they wanted 200,000? points for business for other dates that were available.

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