We may receive a commission when you use our links. Monkey Miles is part of an affiliate sales network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites, such as CreditCards.com and CardRatings. This relationship may impact how and where links appear on this site. This site does not include all financial companies or all available financial offers. Monkey Miles is also a Senior Advisor to Bilt Rewards. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
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
Same deal to Iberia
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.
View this post on Instagram
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.
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
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.
Should 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.
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.