Best uses: How to fly roundtrip international business class for less than 100k Amex points.

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Roundtrip to Asia and Europe for 95k and 88k, respectively? Yep…lemme show you how.

American Express Membership Rewards has amazing transfer partners ( 16 just with airlines). One of which you may have overlooked is ANA. ANA ( All Nippon Airways) is a Japanese Airline whose loyalty program is called Mileage Club. They’re a member of Star Alliance which means we can use their points to access awards on partner airlines with great business class products like EVA, Asiana, Swiss, Lufthansa, Air Canada, etc. Let’s take a look at how you can transfer American Express Membership Rewards into ANA so you can access sweet spots and fly to Asia and Europe in business class for much less than you’d pay using other airline programs.

You could fly roundtrip to Europe for just 88k Amex points in a Throne…keep reading.

Here’s a look at the Airlines that partner with American Express Membership Rewards. ANA is in the 2nd row and is a 1:1 transfer partner. Typically transfer take 1 to 3 days.

ANA’s Star Alliance partners…in case you need a refresher

Here’s how ANA defines zones throughout the world:

And then here is ANA’s chart for Star Alliance Partners from North America: Look at North America to Asia 2 & 3 and then Europe 7. 95k Roundtrip and 88k roundtrip, respectively

To compare…United charges 80k ONE WAY…or 160k Roundtrip to Asia on partners.

United isn’t a partner of American Express, but is being used to simply show the value of the ANA chart. It is a transfer partner of Chase’s Ultimate Rewards and should be mentioned as many people carry both company’s cards.

And then 60k on United’s metal to Europe or 70k on partners one way.

 

Aeroplan (an Amex Transfer Partner) is 75k One way or 150k Roundtrip to Asia.

55k each way to Europe 1

You can also utilize ANA’s routing rules to bake in a Stopover. So if you wanted to fly on EVA to Manila and stop in Taipei on the way or coming back, you could for no additional points.

You can save 10s of thousands of miles purely using one partner vs another. If you enjoyed our little tip…sign up for daily emails!