Hawaiian miles can be valuable in certain very specific situations. For example, miles can be used to upgrade Hawaiian Airlines flights between the U.S. mainland and Hawaii for 25,000 to 50,000 miles one-way. Or you can use as few as 65,000 miles to fly one-way business class between Hawaii and Japan, Korea, Australia, or New Zealand. Outside of a child-sized handful of sweet-spots, though, Hawaiian miles are not all that useful or valuable. That’s why when we first saw that Amex Membership Rewards was offering a 20% transfer bonus to Hawaiian Airlines through 8/31/24, I didn’t hesitate to say “no thanks.”
But now the Alaska / Hawaiian merger is looking extremely likely to actually happen. And, you may recall that in Alaska’s original announcement, they indicated that Hawaiian’s loyalty program will be integrated into Alaska Mileage Plan. Assuming Hawaiian miles will convert 1 to 1 to Mileage Plan miles, then suddenly the Amex transfer bonus looks compelling…
Alaska Mileage Plan miles are far more useful and valuable than Hawaiian miles. Alaska is part of the oneworld alliance and so its miles can be used to fly any oneworld partner (American Airlines, British Airways, Qatar, Qantas, etc.) when award space is available. Additionally, Alaska has a number of great non-alliance partners where you can spend miles too (Iceland Air, Singapore Airlines, STARLUX, etc.). Pair all that with good award pricing and a free stop-over on one-way awards, and you’ve got a winner.
The biggest negative with Alaska Mileage Plan is that miles aren’t all that easy to earn since none of the major bank-run point programs offer point transfers to Alaska. Only Bilt offers 1 to 1 transfers to Alaska, and Bilt points will soon be harder to earn due to new Rent Day limitations.
So, should we transfer our Amex points to Hawaiian in the hopes that they’ll become Alaska miles?
Before answering that, let’s look at the negatives:
- We don’t know for certain that the merger will go through (but it’s a good bet)
- We don’t know for certain that Alaska will fold HawaiianMiles into its Mileage Plan program (but it’s a good bet).
- We don’t know for certain that miles will convert from Hawaiian Airlines to Alaska at a 1 to 1 ratio (but it’s a good bet).
- For transfers to U.S. based airline programs, like Hawaiian, Amex imposes an absurd “excise tax offset fee” of $0.0006 per point (with maximum fee of $99).
Let’s get more into that excise tax offset fee… It’s not a lot of money and so it probably shouldn’t be the deciding factor for most people. However, if you’re on the fence about whether to do the transfer or not, I think it’s reasonable for that extra charge to dissuade you. Keep in mind, though, that as you transfer more and more points, the cost per point goes down thanks to the $99 maximum fee. You’ll pay 60 cents per 1,000 Amex points transferred, but you’ll hit the cap once you’ve transferred 165,000 points. So, if you transfer twice that many Amex points (330K), your average cost per 1,000 points will drop in half to 30 cents per 1,000.
So, now that we know the downsides, should we transfer our Amex points to Hawaiian or not?
Here are some things to consider:
- Are you a fan of Alaska’s new award charts? I am a fan (especially considering the latest Avios devaluations), but some commenters here are decidedly not.
- Are you willing to take risks with your points? As outlined above, lots of things can go wrong.
- Do you have a large enough stash of Amex points so that even after doing the transfer you will have enough Amex points for other transfer opportunities in the future? I like to have at between 400K and 600K Amex points available at all times and so I’d only consider transferring points above that threshold.
- How much does it irk you that Amex charges to transfer to US-based airline programs? I find it ridiculous that we have to pay to transfer points to Hawaiian but not to more valuable programs like Aeroplan, ANA, Flying Blue, etc. And no other transferable points program makes us pay at all. Why Amex, why?
Personally, I’m currently sitting on over 1.5 million Amex points (not counting the millions of points that my wife and son have) and so I’m willing to gamble. My current thinking is that I’ll transfer around 350K points and that will result in 420K Alaska miles. That should be enough to keep me flying for a while.
What do you think? What will you do? Transfer or not? Comment below.
The post Does that Amex to Hawaiian transfer bonus make sense now that the Alaska merger is likely? appeared first on Frequent Miler. Frequent Miler may receive compensation from CHASE. American Express, Capital One, or other partners.