Transfer Bonus Alerts and Current / Past Transfer Bonuses

While not frequent, we have seen transfer bonuses from American Express Membership Rewards to Aeromexico before, although the last two were in 2024 and 2022 (skipping 2023). This transfer bonus ends 11:59 p.m. MT on 4/30/2025.

Aeromexico Rewards points are worth *roughly* 0.75 cents each but with a wide range of ways to redeem.

Normally, you get 1.6 Aeromexico points for 1 Membership Rewards points so that bumps to 1,920 Aeromexico for 1,000 Amex under this promotion –  almost 2:1.

Aeromexico uses a range of redemption options including standard fixed awards and flexible awards – and you’ll see what’s available by searching and that does not require an account.

You can search here (use Google Translate in your browser if available as it’s in Spanish) to check possible redemptions.

Importantly, note the Aeromexico Rewards cancellation policy which is that, well, you can’t cancel it. You can change it, though.

Award Ticket may not be cancelled or reimbursed. If the Member decides not to use the Award Ticket and does not have a flight date scheduled, their Award Ticket will be open for a future flight on the same route, season and cabin.

The Award Ticket will be open for 1 (one) year after the original issuing date, so the trip must be completed within said validity period. Route or cabin changes are not applicable to new Award Tickets. However, there might be a tax and Premier Point difference between the original Award Ticket and the new one. Said difference must be covered when the new Award Ticket is issued. The issuing of the new Award Ticket is subject to seat availability on the desired flight.

Luckily, Aeromexico miles don’t expire.

UPDATE: April 28th, 2025 – You may have received a notification about this bonus ending on April 30th. It was our understanding at the launch based on multiple reports that it would end that date. However, the offer has been pulled entirely. So please ignore the notification about it ending on Wednesday April 30th as the offer has ended.

Ending 11:59 p.m. MT on 4/30/2025, this transfer bonus is not the same for everyone. Some are being offered a 10% bonus and others are being offered a 20% transfer bonus. 

If we look at historical transfer bonuses to Etihad Guest from all transferable points, we see that the average transfer bonus is 20% – 40%, making both iterations of this promotion at the very low end of the range.

My opinion (which was true at 40%, let alone 10%-20%) is that only an expert user of Etihad Guest should even consider it. If booking on Etihad itself (which you might do for access to Etihad First Class space), you will pay between 25% and 75% to cancel a GuestSeat (saver) booking. That is the most punitive of any program I can think of. You can use it to book JetBlue (80k US-Europe in business) but you can also use Qatar for that without the punitive penalties.

You can book short haul partner awards like AA for as little as 6,000 miles, but I don’t think the juice is worth a speculative squeeze. Then again, AA to Europe for 65,000 Etihad isn’t bad with a 40% transfer bonus… You can always check pricing for Etihad Partners if considering it.

This matches an existing 20% transfer bonus from Citi ThankYou to Qatar Avios.

Remember that Qatar Avios has become competitive and inline with other Avois partners. It’s always worth checking whether one or another Avois partner (i.e. British Airways, Iberia, Finnair, or Aer Lingus) has a better redemption price since you can freely move between them. You can even connect your British Airways account directly inside Qatar’s website for easy and instant transfer.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Qatar has devalued their own program twice in recent months, first significantly raising the pricing for AA and Alaska awards, then by adding significant new surcharges on long haul premium awards by almost 200%. I wouldn’t transfer speculatively for just 20% myself, but an Avios pro user with lots of Amex points might.

Amex states the transfer can take up to 48 hours.

Amex is running a very short transfer bonus for Member Week to Marriott Bonvoy. Unfortunately, it’s not a very compelling offer, despite the short timeframe.

For one, an Amex point is worth around 2.5X a Marriott Bonvoy point. So you are getting 25% more while you’d need a 150% bonus to breakeven on point value.

For another, we have seen various transfer bonuses from Chase and American Express to Marriott Bonvoy many times before, racing from 20%-50%, so this is not even at the high end of the range. So this bonus isn’t going to be compelling for most.

As always, there can be exceptions and you might find a 5 night stay (5th night free) where the transfer makes sense, so do the math – but you likely do not want to transfer speculatively unless you are a Bonvoy pro and believe you will exceed value you can get via other, higher value, partners.

While it’s always hard to recommend speculative transfers, Hilton points have gotten more attractive since integrating SLH hotels into Hilton Honors (See Dave’s musing about his thinking on how Hilton points may be becoming more valuable and this more recent article about the extreme value in SLH and other high end Hilton brands.). The integration is already providing exceptional value at properties with rates in the $1,000 – $2,000 a night range for, on average, 130,000 points a night. So, it appears his musing has become a reality.

And as long as you have at least the lowest tier Hilton status, the 5th night is free on any award and resort fees are also waived on award stays.

It may take up to 24 hours to get the bonus miles which are being offered by Lifemiles rather than Amex.

Exact end time is February 28th, 2025 (11:59 PM GMT-6).

Details of the transfer bonus are here on the Lifemiles website. The bonus is being solely offered by Lifemiles and therefore you will not see the offer on the American Express website.

That said, I do not think almost anyone should be taking advantage of this offer.

This simply makes the rate an even 1:1 as it’s normally 1:0.8. You’ll also have to pay the excise transfer fee. Unlikely to be a great deal for most.

One possible outsized redemption would be a Qatar Airways QSuite bookable with 70,000 points if terminating in Doha. Unfortunately, connections like to Male add quite a bit on. You may find better award space to Doha on JetBlue compared to other Oneworld airlines like American, but find the space on the JetBlue website before transferring anything!!

KEEP IN MIND: Virgin Flying Club has moved to a dynamic pricing for awards. In some cases we are seeing extreme value like 29,000 point Business Class awards from the US to London. In other cases, the prices have risen dramatically.  Run some searches before transferring.

It’s also worth Virgin Atlantic transfer bonuses are fairly frequent between various programs. See historical transfer bonuses to Virgin Atlantic here. This is the 7th transfer bonus this year from a bank program to Virgin Atlantic. Most bonuses have been at 30%, although one from Chase for 40% just ended.

Best Uses of Virgin Flying Club points:

We have seen past bonuses from Chase and American Express of up to 70%, so while 35% seems like a large bonus, it’s in the midrange of historical bonuses. (See historical transfer bonuses to Marriott Bonvoy).

This is almost never a good transfer unless you are topping off for an award you are ready to book. Keep in mind that we value a Membership Rewards point at almost 3X the value of a Marriott Bonvoy point.

However, there are always exceptions and you might find a 5 night stay (5th night free) where the transfer makes sense so do the math – but you likely do not want to transfer speculatively unless you are a Bonvoy pro and believe you will exceed value you can get via other Amex partners.

This offer runs through the end of 2024, so no rush to decide.

I’m just going to come straight out and tell you not to do this unless you are an unbelievably experienced Avianca Lifemiles user and know exactly what you need more miles for. They also have transfer bonuses all the time, almost always more than 15%.

The transfer bonus is paltry at 15%, the Lifemiles program just did a major unannounced devaluation, and they are no longer the only option for avoiding surcharges on Star Alliance flights (hello Aeroplan).

Also see: Downsides of LifeMiles program.