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30% Amex Transfer Bonus to British Airways Avios or Iberia Avios

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30% transfer bonus from Amex to British Airways Avios or Iberia

American Express periodically runs transfer bonuses to their airline and hotel partners, and in the past year we’ve seen a distinct ramp up of those bonuses.  Currently, Amex has debuted a new 30% bonus when you convert Amex points into British Airways Avios or Iberia Avios.  Is this a good deal? It definitely could be, so let’s take a look.

30% Amex transfer bonus to British Airways

  • Runs until 08/31/23
  • 1000 Amex = 1300 Avios
  • capped at 999k Avios

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Same deal to Iberia

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Booking Qatar Airways QSuites with British Airways Avios

Let’s take a look at a couple of different itineraries…the first is to Doha. I would have loved to stay at the St Regis Doha a bit longer when I visited back in 2019, and would highly recommend the property. I’ll also point out that Doha is littered with incredible properties at attractive prices, but when we stayed, my family  was upgraded to an incredible suite for our stay.

If you were to travel from the UK/Europe to Cape Town = 75k British Airways Avios or 58k Amex points with this transfer bonus

I recently flew this route, but used American Miles and did a stopover in Doha.

 

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Link your Qatar Airways and British Airways Accounts to move points between them

I haven’t dug through all of the various permutations of where one program has suite spots the other doesn’t, but linking your accounts means you could take Amex, Chase, Cap1 points, move them to BA, and then over to Qatar Airways Avios if they priced better. It takes a few minutes to complete and sets you up for success.

Once you log into you account you’ll be prompted to link your BA and Qatar Airways accounts.

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Other great uses of British Airways Avios?

Funny enough, the best ways to use British Airways Avios isn’t on British Airways itself. Here are a few of the ways I’d look to leverage them into great deals.

Upgrade your British Airways flight with British Airways Avios

BA makes it pretty simple to figure out whether or not you can use points to upgrade. If an award seat is available in the next cabin up, odds are, you can upgrade.

There are exceptions to these rules:

  • Your ticket was issued by a partner airline American, Finnair, Japan Airlines, Cathay Pacific, etc
  • You booked a fare coded as Q, O or G.

How many points will you need? Whatever the difference in a award price from your cabin to the next cabin up. The easiest tool I’ve found is the avios calculator here.

I have done this many times – the best…using 25k points to upgrade from a cheap business class ticket into BA first class from LA to London. You can read the review here

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Using British Airways Avios for short haul flights on partners

This is another great use of British Airways Avios. Since their program is distance based, and they don’t tack on fees for flights on AA, this is a great thing to keep an eye on. Especially for flights to places like Hawaii. For instance, AA charges, at its cheapest 22.5k miles from LA to Honolulu in economy. That same flight, if you used Amex to transfer to BA, would cost you just 13k points. That’s pretty incredible especially given the fact that Amex runs 30-50% transfer bonus promos annually on Amex to BA transfers.

a screenshot of a phoneShould you move Amex points if you don’t have a booking

Absolutely not. I never recommend moving points without a specific redemption in mind; however, I have done in the past, but unless you are especially savvy at extracting value I wouldn’t do it.

Are other Avios programs included?

It’s very rare to not see Iberia and Aer Lingus also included in these transfer bonuses; however, it does happen. You should know that you can always move Avios between programs via Avios.com so it doesn’t really matter if Amex permits it or not. You can do it.

Recap

If you have use for British Airways Avios, this could be a good time to move those bad boys over and book it. If not… don’t do a speculative move.

Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.

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Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card


4.8
4.8/5
The Chase Sapphire Preferred® is a great starter card that earns Premium Ultimate Rewards that can be transferred into over a dozen partners many of which are US based including Hyatt, Southwest, United, IHG, and Marriott.

Welcome Offer

60k Points after $4k spend in 3 months

Annual Fee

$95

Points Earned

Transferrable Chase Ultimate Rewards

  • 3x on dining
    •  including eligible delivery services for takeout
  • 3x on select streaming services
  • 3x on online grocery purchases
    • (excluding Target, Walmart and wholesale clubs)
  • 5x on all travel purchased through Chase Travel Portal
  • 2x on all other travel
  • $50 Annual Credit on hotel stays purchased via Chase Travel
    • The begins immediately for new cardmembers and after your account anniversary for existing cardmembers
  • 10% Anniversary Bonus
    • Every year you keep the card, your total spend will yield a 10% points bonus. If you spend $10k in a year, you’ll get 1k bonus points
  • Chase Sapphire Preferred® continues to redeem at 1.25c in the Chase Travel Portal and the slew of other benefits remain in tact including primary rental car insurance, purchase protections, etc.
  • Points are transferrable to 13 Ultimate Rewards partners
  • Redeem in the Chase Travel center for 1.25 cents per point
  • No foreign transaction fees
  • Suite of Travel and Purchase Coverage
    • Primary rental car coverage is my favorite

We keep an up to date spreadsheet that lists the best ever offers: You can find that spreadsheet here.

Historically 80k is a very, very good offer and hit in both 2022 and 2023. In 2021, we saw the offer hit an all time high of 100k. Who knows if that will ever come back.

Main Cast: 

Cards that earn flexible points and should be used on the bulk of your purchases.

Supporting Cast:

Cards that earn fixed points in the currency of the airline/hotel and can not be transferred at attractive rates. These cards yield benefits that make it worth keeping, but not necessarily worth putting a lot of your everyday spend on. 

The Chase Sapphire Preferred® is exceptional starter card and offers transferrable Ultimate Rewards, and pairs well with other Chase cards.

If you carry this card alongside Chase’s cashback cards like the Chase Freedom Flex℠and Chase Freedom Unlimited® or the business versions: Ink Business Cash® , Ink Business Unlimited® you can combine the points into Preferred account and transfer into hotel and airline partners

Annual fee is quite low at $95 a year + you get a 10% anniversary bonus on points + $50 hotel credit in Chase travel.

The responses below are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved, or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.

4 Comments

  • JJ August 28, 2023

    All these great deals are never available with the Platinum Amex from Germany. It is a bummer!!

  • William August 15, 2023

    American Express Green Card: Earn 60k points after spending $3000 in the first 6 months + Earn 20% back on travel & transit purchases up to $200

    https://americanexpress.com/en-us/referral/WILLINEyQJ?xl=cp33

    Good Luck! Thank You So Much!

  • mbh April 4, 2022

    Whenever I look for a domestic award flight on BA, it ALWAYS says “no flights exist” (yes, I have the “include partners” checked). I used to think there just wasn’t an award flight on that date, but after extending the calendar for months, for a variety of city combos, I’ve concluded that BA isn’t ever going to let me fly in the US on avios. Anyone else run into this?

  • Ed April 4, 2022

    This is a great time to take advantage of the bonus. Word of warning, one of my transfers processed successfully, the second only base miles transferred and not the bonus. I’m stuck with Amex Help Desk trying to get this corrected for the past several days.

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