April 24, 2025: Perhaps the best use of American Express Membership Rewards® points is transferring points to one of American Express’ many transfer partners. If you want to get the most value our of your Membership Rewards points, understanding Amex transfer partners is key.
While you’ll see a lot of hype about using Membership Rewards for Emirates First Class, Singapore Airlines First Class, or “sweet spot awards” in business class from South America to Australia, you’re not going to use these redemption options most of the time.
In this guide, we’ll show you all of the Amex transfer partners, with an emphasis on highlight the most useful Membership Rewards transfer partners—the ones that are both easy to use and that offer good value on routes your’e likely to fly. And this guide is based on our actual use of Membership Rewards® rather than theoretical “sweet spots.”
Here’s everything you need to know about American Express transfer partners.
Amex transfer partners at a glance
Here’s a quick list of Amex transfer partners and the standard transfer rates you’ll see with the program.
 | Air France KLM Flying Blue | 1000 points = 1,000 miles |
 | Aer Lingus AerClub | 1,000 points = 1,000 Avios |
 | AeroMexico Rewards | 1,000 points = 1,600 AeroMexico Rewards points |
 | Air Canada Aeroplan | 1,000 points = 1,000 Aeroplan® points |
 | ANA Mileage Club | 1,000 points = 1,000 miles |
 | Avianca LifeMiles | 1,000 Points = 1,000 LifeMiles |
 | British Airways Executive Club | 1,000 points = 1,000 Avios |
 | Cathay Pacific Asia Miles™ | 1,000 Points = 1,000 Asia Miles™ |
 | Delta SkyMiles® | 1,000 points = 1,000 SkyMiles Subject to a charge of $0.0006 per point to offset excise taxes, with a maximum fee of $99. |
 | Emirates Skywards | 1,000 points = 1,000 miles |
 | Etihad Guest | 1,000 points = 1,000 miles |
 | HawaiianMiles® | 1,000 points = 1,000 miles |
 | Iberia Plus | 1,000 points = 1,000 Avios |
 | JetBlue TrueBlue | 250 points = 200 TrueBlue points |
 | Qantas Frequent Flyer | 500 points = 500 Qantas points |
 | Qatar Airways Privilege Club | 1,000 points = 1,000 Avios |
 | Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer® | 1,000 points = 1,000 miles |
 | Virgin Atlantic Flying Club | 1,000 points = 1,000 Virgin points |
 | Choice Privileges® | 1,000 points = 1,000 Choice Privileges points |
 | Hilton Honors | 1,000 points = 2,000 Hilton points |
 | Marriott Bonvoy | 1,000 points = 1,000 Marriott Bonvoy points |
Why Amex transfer partners are one of the best Membership Rewards redemption options
Why do we get so excited about transfer partners? The answer is simply because transfer partners give us the most opportunity to get outsized value from our points.
Membership Rewards cards don’t always have great options for cash back. While some cards let you get 1 cent of cash back per point by redeeming for a deposit into a brokerage account or Amex business checking account, you’ll have to jump through some hoops to avoid the paltry 0.6 cents of cash back you’ll get when you redeem for a statement credit.
In contrast, we can easily parlay our Membership Rewards points into more than 1 cent per point of value—and sometimes much more than that—when we transfer points to partners and then redeem points for travel through those programs.
Amex transfer partners we like the best
We love using Membership Rewards for transfers to airline partners. Here are the transfer partners that in our experience, we’ve gotten the most value from. Some of them may surprise you.
Air France KLM Flying Blue: Great for Europe
What we love: Flying Blue monthly promo awards. These deals, released on the first weekday of every month, are some of the cheapest options for getting between the United States and Europe on points. If you’re flying in coach, you can often get a family of five to Europe for under 100,000 points using these promos.
What it’s most useful for: Monthly promo awards to Europe, mostly in coach. Occasional domestic flights on Delta. Intra-Europe flights on SkyTeam.
What we get frustrated with: In the past, Flying Blue frequently offered discounted business class awards through its monthly promo awards, but we haven’t seen a business class deal from North America in quite some time. That’s a bummer. The program also charges modestly high fees on award tickets and the award search tool on the Air France and KLM websites…requires some patience.
Air Canada Aeroplan: Our first search for Star Alliance awards
What we love: Air Canada Aeroplan lets us book on Star Alliance (the largest airline alliance), has a massive number of non-alliance partners, doesn’t pass on taxes and fuel surcharges, has distance/zone-based pricing on many flights, and runs a functional website. There’s a lot to love with this program.
What it’s most useful for: Anything on Star Alliance.
What we get frustrated with: There’s very little about Aeroplan that we can legitimately complain about, especially when you compare it to the complexity and hoops of other programs. On our wishlist would be a calendar-view, the ability to search for only low-level award availability on flights priced using the award chart, and not paying more for an award flight that can be canceled or changed (like is common with the U.S. programs).
Avianca LifeMiles: Great if things don’t change
What we love: Avianca offers some of the best award pricing on Star Alliance, and transfers from almost every major transferable point program. Points expire after a year, but any use re-ups the expiration date of all of your points.
What it’s most useful for: Getting a cheaper award on Star Alliance than you’ll get with other easy-to-use programs. We’ve also found great pricing on short-haul flights in United within the United States.
What we get frustrated with: If everything goes well, Avianca LifeMiles is great. But if an airline changes your schedule or cancels your flight, good luck. Customer service has gotten better, but expect to spend hours if you need to deal with a flight change or cancellation. The website sometimes requires some persuasion to show awards that are bookable with other programs. (Our tip: if you’re not seeing the flights you expect, select “Star Alliance” or a specific airline instead of “Smart Search.”)
Delta SkyMiles: Easy to use for travel within the U.S.
What we love: Transfers to Delta SkyMiles® gives us an easy way to use our Membership Rewards® to displace cash we’re otherwise going to spend for domestic travel. We also really like that non-Basic Economy awards originating in North America are cancelable, with miles being redeposited into our SkyMiles accounts. That means we can use SkyMiles to book trips speculatively, rather than waiting until we’re absolutely sure we’re going to travel.
What it’s most useful for: Flights on Delta. Delta SkyMiles flash sales. Speculative flights on Delta and SkyTeam originating in North America.
What we get frustrated with: Amex does charge a fee to recapture the excise taxes it pays on point transfers, but this is a mild annoyance. SkyMiles is (almost) completely useless for International premium cabin travel at reasonable prices, but our expectations of the program have changed.
Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer®: Use for flights on Singapore Airlines
What we love: With good friends in Singapore, having access to the expanded award availability afforded to Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer members is personally useful to me.
What it’s most useful for: Singapore Airlines flights, including Singapore Airlines first class.
What we get frustrated with: The program isn’t very useful for much else, beyond flights on Singapore Airlines.
Virgin Atlantic Flying Club: We got an award to New Zealand!
What we love: Last year, Virgin Atlantic Flying Club points got me two tickets in business class on Air New Zealand between the U.S. and Auckland. Some might consider that a unicorn award, but it was good enough to promote the program to being one of my favorite programs.
What it’s most useful for: North America to Europe awards in business class and economy.
What we get frustrated with: The program seems less useful now that favorable pricing on DeltaOne awards to Europe has been nerfed.
Transfer partners we don’t use often
The transfer partners featured above aren’t the only Amex partners that are useful—they’re just the ones that we have recent personal experience using for good value. But there are plenty of other transfer partners that might offer excellent value for you, depending on the awards you want to book.
- Aer Lingus AerClub. We’ve read that this program is particularly good for off-peak awards on Aer Lingus, including in business class. But this just hasn’t matched up with our travel patterns. (Though there’s a very good chance that travel to Ireland is in our future, so we might promote this program if we get some experience using it.)
- ANA MileageClub. Honestly, this is a program that we should use more because it offers premium cabin flights for some of the lowest mileage prices available. What has kept us away is the complexity of booking and the program’s mileage expiration policy. Recent changes eliminated the program’s round-the-world awards, largely thought to be one of the best values in award travel, but introduced one-way awards. On balance, those changes probably make this program more useful to more people, which we like.
- British Airways Executive Club. This program used to offer excellent value for American Airlines flights within North America, but price increases have eliminated that once-useful sweet spot. This isn’t a program we use often.
- Cathay Pacific Asia Miles™. This program offers some interesting sweet-spot awards for around-the-world travel and some fun business class awards—if you’re willing to go from the U.S. to Europe via the Middle East. But this program hasn’t matched up with our travel patterns in the recent past.
- Emirates Skywards. The best uses of these miles are for Emirates First Class flights, plus a few niche routings to islands that we have yet to take advantage of.
- Etihad Guest. The program’s distance-based award chart probably means that there are some really good niche uses of these points, especially on shorter flights in non-competitive markets with high cash pricing. Many, many years ago, we used these miles to fly on Etihad in coach, but it’s been quite a while since we’ve used Etihad miles.
- HawaiianMiles®. Probably the best use of Hawaiian miles in recent memory is as a back-door way to convert your Membership Rewards® points into Alaska Airlines miles. As of our last update, you could transfer Amex Membership Rewards points to Hawaiian, and then transfer them to Alaska Airlines. We haven’t yet done this, since we don’t regularly use Alaska miles, but we’re tempted.
- Iberia Plus. Iberia Plus miles are most useful for U.S. East Coast to Spain on Iberia. There are arguably some niche redemption options available on American Airlines based on Iberia’s award chart, but we don’t see ourselves using these consistently any time soon.
- JetBlue TrueBlue. JetBlue’s award pricing, like Delta’s, is tied to the cash prices of tickets. With a limited set of partners and not having really any routes that make sense for a Minneapolis-based flyer to fly, this program isn’t terribly useful to us. Plus Amex offers a worse trasfer ratio than other programs. If you’re going to use this program, transfer your points from Citi ThankYou Rewards® or Chase Ultimate Rewards® instead.
- Qantas Frequent Flyer. The program offers good pricing on relatively short-distance trips in both coach and premium cabins. Since pricing is based on origin-to-destination pricing, you might get particularly good value on connecting itineraries where you’re backtracking. Since we’re based in Minneapolis and fly mostly Delta for our domestic flights, this program just hasn’t matched up with where we fly enough to be useful.
Transfer partners we would almost never use
Finally, there are some Amex transfer partners that we would almost never use. Here they are, and here’s why.
- Marriott Bonvoy. Marriott Bonvoy point redemption prices are increasingly tied to the cash prices of rooms, at values (usually) well under 1 cent per point. We can get much better value for our points elsewhere, so we’d almost never transfer to Marriott. The one exception is if we needed just a few points to top off our account for a specific redemption.
- AeroMexico Rewards. Between the confusing transfer ratios, the non-functional website, the reputation for poor customer service, and the high fees, we’re staying away. There might be some obscure sweet-spot redemptions with this program, but those aren’t useful enough for us to worry about this program.
- Choice Privileges®. We’ve found plenty of value in Choice’s program, especially on budget hotels awards that displace cash we would otherwise spend. But if we’re transferring points to Choice, we want to transfer from Citi ThankYou Rewards®, which will give us a 2:1 transfer ratio, versus Amex’s 1:1 transfer ratio.
- Hilton Honors. While you can transfer points to Hilton at a 2:1 ratio, you’ll typically get less than half a cent of value worth of Hilton stays for your Hilton points when you redeem them, so we’d almost never use this option.
Bottom line: Amex Transfer partners are useful
For us, and for most readers of this blog, Flying Blue, Aeroplan, SkyMiles, Life Miles, and Virgin Atlantic Flying Club are likely to be the most useful Amex transfer partners. These partners all offer relatively easy-to-use rewards that can easily get you more than 1 cent of value out of each of your Membership Rewards points.
