Update 6/23/25: Just a quick reminder that transfers from American Express Membership Rewards to Hawaiian Airlines will end next week. If you’ve been procrastinating with transferring points over, there’s not long left to do that.
Update 5/16/25: It’s now official: as we expected, American Express Membership Rewards transfers to Hawaiian Airlines (and thus to Alaska) will be ending on 6/30/25. This is according to a banner at the top of the Membership Rewards transfer page:
I’m pleasantly surprised at both Alaska and American Express for giving us six weeks’ notice. There’s been much fear and consternation, justifiably, that we would all wake up some morning and find that the ability to transfer to Hawaiian is gone. Instead, we now have a firm date and can plan accordingly.
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Alaska Airlines’ acquisition of Hawaiian Air has been one of the juiciest topics in points and miles sewing circles over the last year or so. The previously unremarkable HawaiianMile has been transformed into an object of desire and intrigue based on its new 1:1 transferability to Alaska Mileage Plan miles.
Hawaiian is a transfer partner of American Express Membership Rewards, which effectively means that Alaska is now a transfer partner also: transfer your Amex points to Hawaiian, then convert them to Alaska miles on a 1:1 basis.
While this has provided a never-before-seen opportunity for infrequent Alaska customers to stockpile Mileage Plan miles, it also gives rise to a very common question: when will transfers from Amex to Hawaiian be going away?
Alaska has set a target date for debuting a combined Alaska/Hawaiian loyalty program of “Summer 2025.” Accordingly, we’ve assumed that’s generally when Amex transfers will go away.
A few weeks ago, Frequent Miler Insiders moderator Zed saw that, as of July 1st, 2025, Virgin Australia will no longer be a partner of Hawaiian Air. Today, MonkeyMiles noticed that the last day for ALL non-Alaska airline partnerships with Hawaiian will be 6/30/25. In addition, several shopping and dining partners will be ending on the same day.
Given all that, it seems a fair guess to say that this will also be the last day that Amex to Hawaiian transfers will be possible as well.
Quick Thoughts
To be 100% clear, this is pure speculation for now. We haven’t heard anything concrete from Alaska, Hawaiian or American Express. That said, we’ve been waiting for indications at to when the final hammer will drop, and the announcement of the same end-date for all of these Hawaiian airline and shopping partners seems to be a pretty good guess.
Frankly, if I had Membership Rewards and wanted to transfer them to Hawaiian/Alaska, I’d do it sooner than later…there’s no guarantee that the ability to do so will be there next week. While the tea leaves are pointing to June 30th, there’s absolutely no reason to try and wait until the last minute.
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I transferred Amex points over to Hawaiian today. But now, I get an error when i try to transfer the Hawaiian miles over to Alaska. Anyone else seeing this?
Maybe just a dry spell but I looked for LAS to HNL first class redemptions on an HA A330 and they were all 100k plus. Still can get narrow body AA bookings with Hawaiian/Alaska miles for the route at 40K pts, though.
Why are Alaska miles so valuable that I should speculatively transfer Amex points to Hawaiian before the deadline? I realize that Alaska miles are hard to come by but what are their sweet spots that makes them unique?
https://frequentmiler.com/alaska-air-mileage-plan-complete-guide/
If I wanted to get some Alaska miles before June 30th, could I apply for a AMEX platinum card today and immediately do the minimum spending. Would I get the welcome bonus points before June 30th and be able to transfer to Hawaiian and then Alaska in time? Assuming the June 30th date is correct.
Any other DPs of people getting the “points exceed limit” message (i forget the exact wording). I have only transferred a couple thousand points and now I keep getting this message
this only means massive incoming alaska miles devaluation
Just as a heads up, the email that went out for this post didn’t show the update, so it just looked like you were asking the question again
Good on Alaska and Hawaiian as well as AMEX for giving notice on this. Alaska is still guilty of some partner award devaluations without any heads up but this gives me a little more faith we won’t see a catastrophic overnight change in their award charts.
Did I do my math right that the Amex excise tax fee caps out at $99, which is 165,000 MR points transferred. So any transfer above 165k is “free”.
Yes indeed, which makes it more palatable for those awash in MR who want to get in on this while there’s still a chance
Will we still be able to transfer Hawaiian miles between other Hawaiian accounts providing we have a Hawaiian credit card or is that feature going away?
That’s unclear. As long as the Hawaiian cards continue to exist in their current form, you will. However, eventually, they will become BOA cards, and we’re not sure if they will remain Hawaiian-branded. Alaska has said that they “would like” to continue points-sharing for cardholders, but we haven’t seen any firm confirmation on that.
just to be clear, Hawaiian is losing their partnership with JAL, Korean Air, Virgin Atlantic, etc. NOT Alaskan Air…right? Those partnerships will remain?
That’s correct. Alaska owns Hawaiian now.
[…] Are Amex points transfers to Hawaiian Airlines about to end soon? – Frequent Miler […]
I bet the Hawaiian credit cards also end on that date and maybe the elite Alaska card gets announced.
We get lots of bonus points for using our Amex Gold and Amex Blue Business cards (4x points on Amex Gold for restaurants & food stores; 2x points on Blue Business on all charges). These points then transfer to Hawaiian, and then to Alaska, etc. Hoping that the transfer privilege to Hawaiian will NOT disappear. If so, we’ll be forced to only use our Alaska Visa card for points, which are only 1 point per dollar. We’ll be watching…
Just guessing, but my speculation is that July 1 is when the ability to get Hawaiian credit cards goes away too.
Again I wouldn’t wait for the last minute.