Update 11/15/24: Here we go again. There have been numerous reports of transfers from Amex Membership Rewards to HawaiianMiles having more issues. Like last time, transfers to Hawaiian will go through, but then are refunded within 15 minutes. I tried it with a small 1,000 point transfer and just over five minutes later the points were back in my Membership Rewards account.
I chatted with a rep who said (again) that transfer are being blocked on the Hawaiian side, not the Amex side. My assumption is that this is a temporary issue like last time, but that hasn’t been confirmed by anyone at Amex or Hawaiian.
If someone has been able to successfully complete a transfer, please let us know in the comments…but please wait at least 15 minutes or until the miles appear in your Hawaiian account before reporting.
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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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