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?
Update 9/27/24: We’ve now received multiple reports of folks getting Amex/Hawaiian transfers to work, with the miles displaying instantly in their Hawaiian accounts. It looks like some have been able to do it online even after repeatedly getting error messages and others have been successful via chat rep.
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Uh-oh.
There’s been a lot of anticipation (and speculation) about what would happen with American Express Membership Rewards transfers to Hawaiian Airlines once it became possible to transfer HawaiianMiles to Alaska Mileage Plan. Alaska has never been a partner of a major transferable currency (sorry Bilt), and once transfers became possible from Hawaiian to Alaska, it would effectively mean that you could transfer Membership Rewards to Alaska.
Well, Hawaiian/Alaska transfers are now live…and Amex/Hawaiian isn’t working.
Online, attempts to transfer lead to an error message:
At first I thought that this might be because of increased volume due to the Alaska/Hawaiian transfer going live, but I didn’t have issues with any of Amex’s other partners.
So, I got help from an Amex chat rep and was successfully able to transfer 1,000 points to Hawaiian with their help…only to have those points instantly refunded:
That’s not a good sign.
Quick Thoughts
Greg and Nick discussed whether or not the Amex/Hawaiian transfer would eventually end, and when, on last week’s Frequent Miler on the Air. They both agreed that the most likely scenario would be that it would go away next year sometime when the programs combined, but that there was a small chance it might die as soon as you could move HawaiianMiles to Alaska. Could the longshot actually be happening?
It could still be that this is simply a temporary technical issue. If anyone is able to successfully make a transfer, please let us know in the comments (and tell us if you did it online or with a rep).
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I moved 68,000 Amex points to Hawaiian last night around 8 PM, did not show up. Now, about 15 hours later, still not in my account. It’s supposed to be instant. (Even thought the Amex page says allow 2-3 business days for pretty much everyone).
A bit concerned.
EDIT: They have now showed up. Took about 24 hours. 🙂
When I try to combine HA miles into Alaska with the link on the HA website, points.com only offers me to combine Alaska miles INTO HA miles. Anybody seeing the same thing? https://storefront.points.com/mileage-plan/en-US/exchange/lps?lpId=2053&locale=en-US
Seems there was a glitch yesterday. Today its working and my transfers worked.
I was able to transfer from Amex to Haiwaiian then to Alaska instantly on 10/22/24
I am unable to transfer Hawaiian miles to Alaska. I just moved 50000 MR to Hawaiian and when I try to transfer to Alaska, I get the following error message – “You are not eligible for this exchange. Please check the FAQ section for more details or contact your Loyalty provider.”
Any DPs on if this is still working or I am out of luck.
I would imagine eventually the two programs will merge all miles 1:1 so you haven’t lost that 50k forever.
[…] oh: Are Amex Membership Rewards transfers to Hawaiian Airlines dead? […]
I did 2 transfers from Amex to Hawaiian. Did a test 5K transfer; then another 135K. Both went through almost instantly. From there, I was able to transfer these points over to Alaska immediately. Thanks to FM for the valuable guidance along the way!
I was able to transfer Amex points to Hawaiian on 10/01/24 at 3:42 PM PT
I transferred 1,000 Amex Points online and got a confirmation email a few seconds later, and points showed up in the Hawaiian account instantly.
Fine, I caved and transferred 70k pts to Hawaiian just in case. I do think there’s probably still some run way on these MR to Hawaiian transfers though.
Would suck if Alaska suddenly devalued.
failed for me every time until I read the comments below and chatted with an Amex rep. 350,000 MP later I’ve successfully transferred them to Hawaiian. Thank you FM!
Worked for me, transferred 50K to Hawaiian, Hawaiian to AS immediately
Frequentmiler guys are awesome! I love using alaskan airline pts. Last week, redeemed 27.5K Alaskan pts one-way flights each (family of 6) to go from MSP to CDGfor may 27th via Iceland air. Alaskan points were getting very low, but you guys made my day! after 7 attempts and following some helpful hints at this comment section, I was able to transfer Amex pts to Hawaiian 1:1 plus $99 Amex fee (yes, I transferred over 500K amex pts). So, today this was what happend in 20 minutes time frame: I just created Hawaiian account right before my first failed attempt to transfer. Did it on PC. Failed to registered the account for pts transfer. Showed up error screen like the example Frequentmiler listed above. Tried several more time and still same result. Then took my android amex app and was able to successfully add the Hawaiian acct. However, was not able to transfer amex pts to Hawaiian as the same error popped up several more time. I thought all was lost, but I gave it another try by switching back to my PC and signing into the amex login. Proceeded to transfer pts and it workd the first time! The rest was pretty straight forward when the pts posted into the hawaiian account in 1 minute time. I then clicked on the transfer link located in my Hawaiian acct and scrolled the blue selection tab to Alaska miles (transfer point into Alaska acct). Within less than 1 minute, my alaskan acct showed up the transferred pts. I hope this info help. You guys rock with your strategies! Keep trying and do not give up!
Worked for me. Transferred 81k MR to HA then to AS
why is there a rush to do it now? are people thinking amex will remove hawaiian airline transfer?
Yes
Worked for me. Today I transferred 30k MR points to Hawaiian and then to Alaska.
Did amex charge u a fee to transfer the points to Hawaiian?
There’s always the 0.6% fee, no way to avoid it. It’s capped at $99 so doing 200k+ transfer is better
Bet, Thanks!!!!
Yes. Amex charge for all transfers to US Domestic Mileage Programs ( Hawaiian, Delta, Jet Blue)
Thats been in place for years.
It finally worked for me this afternoon after several failures last night and this morning. Transferred 24k miles.