Frequent Miler's latest team challenge, Million Mile Madness, is happening now! Follow us as Greg, Nick, and Stephen compete to earn 1 Million SAS miles by flying 15 airlines before November 23rd. Who will complete the challenge with the most Speed, Affordability, and Style?
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Update 8/30: Tomorrow is the last day for the transfer bonus from Amex Membership Rewards to HawaiianMiles. Normally, this wouldn’t be noteworthy in the least, but it’s probably the most intriguing transfer bonus out right now due to the likely merger of Alaska and Hawaiian Airlines. The expectation is that once the loyalty programs combine, HawaiianMiles will become Alaska miles at a 1:1 ratio, making this a potential backdoor route to a stake in Alaska Mileage Plan. Greg’s betting big on exactly this situation and you can read his thoughts here.
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Amex is offering a 20% transfer bonus from Membership Rewards to Hawaiian Airlines HawaiianMiles through August 31, 2024. There’s not much aloha in Hawaiian’s award pricing, but the bonus does mean you can get lie-flat business from the mainland for 33,333 Membership Rewards (MR) each way or economy from 16,667 MR each way (assuming that you can find saver availability).
The Deal
- Get a 20% bonus on all transfers from American Expres Membership Rewards to Hawaian Airlines’ HawaiianMiles program through 8/31/24
Key Terms
- Every time you transfer Membership Rewards into a U.S. airline frequent flyer program, your Linked Card account will be charged an excise tax offset fee of $0.0006 per point (with maximum fee of $99). American Express charges this fee to offset the federal excise tax we must pay when you transfer points. We may offer you the option to use points to pay this fee. You will be able to review these details before completing the transfer.
- Minimum transfer is 1,000 Membership Rewards points.
- Redeem for this exclusive offer from 12:00 a.m. MT on 8/1/2024 to 11:59 p.m. MT on 8/31/2024, to receive 20% additional HawaiianMiles.
- Additional HawaiianMiles will be awarded at the time of transfer. Generally, transfers are immediate but please allow at least 72 hours for the transfer to be completed. Please note that some partner loyalty programs may delay posting points to your partner loyalty account, which can affect transfer times.
Quick Thoughts
This Amex bonus comes up about once/year, last year it was also 20%. Hawaiian’s award chart leaves much to be desired, but it can be a decent choice for awards to Hawai’i on Hawaiian metal when flying from the East Coast (when lie-flat becomes especially valuable) or from Hawai’i to Australia/New Zealand, where business class awards can be had for 65k each way. The transfer bonus makes the cost palatable, especially with the swimming pool-sized stashes of Amex points that some folks have.
That said, it can be extremely difficult to actually find business-class rewards from the East Coast, so only transfer if you have a specific, available, award in mind. Speculative transfers to HawaiianMiles should be avoided.
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Ouch… leading the sheep to the slaughter. Enjoy using those HA miles! I’ve a feeling there will be even LESS availability now 😉
just transferred 500K MR to Hawaiian w 20% bonus. Here’s hoping for an Alaska Ka-ching
Bold move Cotton.
Hi FM team, it would be great to get an update now that DOJ declined to challenge the AL/HA merger. Other outlets are speculating 1. it’s basically a done deal just a matter of time, 2. it’ll be a 1:1 merger of HA to AL miles. It would be great to hear the team’s thoughts on this and whether we should be jumping on this as a big opportunity to get AS miles.
There’s never any saver availability in Business, even 10-11 months in advance. I have some stranded miles with Hawaiian that I’ve been trying to use for 8 years.
Thank you for your information.
There is always something hiding behind all possibilities.
We flew earlier this year and booked about 9-10 months out (I think), saw all first class seats were available. None were saver when I called. Not sure if that is the norm but thought I would share if anyone was planning to speculatively transfer.
Unless you found saver availability to book right now I wouldn’t bother. Anytime saver business space is available on Hawaiian you can also book for the same 40K with Virgin points which would avoid the excise tax from AMEX and is available more often at a better 30% transfer bonus.
Thank you for your information.