Amex travel - points, status credits and/or upgrades?

[theevilmuppet]

Hi all,

I've put together a half-decent balance of Amex Membership Reward points and am looking to use them for my travel in the US next year for flights on Delta or perhaps on some flights around SE Asia.

My current focus is maintaining my status with Virgin Australia so I'm hoping for some insights from members who have used AMEX MR points for booking fares with DL, SQ and/or NZ. Specifically:

• Were your fares equivalent to those booked with actual payment?
• Did you earn points/miles?
• Did you earn status credits/qualifying points/qualifying miles?
• Have you attempted to upgrade with Velocity Points/Airpoints/SkyMiles after securing your fare with AMEX MR points?

Thanks to all who reply.

EDIT: I have asked American Express about this. Given how hard it was to get an answer regarding actual advertised benefits for the Platinum Edge and the Velocity Platinum cards, I am not holding out much hope.

 

[Cynicor]

Sorry, it is unclear what you want to do exactly.

Are you going to book rewards flights or use MR to $ via their online travel agency?

If the latter, they are full retail fares with all benefits, and also extremely poor value. Best use of MR is conversion to FF programmes such as SQ or Velocity.

 

[theevilmuppet]

Sorry, it is unclear what you want to do exactly.

Are you going to book rewards flights or use MR to $ via their online travel agency?

If the latter, they are full retail fares with all benefits, and also extremely poor value. Best use of MR is conversion to FF programmes such as SQ or Velocity.

What I'm looking to do is to use MR points to book fares instead of transferring them to Velocity or similar if (and only if) the resulting fares earn points/miles and status credits/qualifying miles.

For example instead of transferring points to Velocity and redeeming an award fare, I'd use MR points via AMEX Travel to book as to pick up the Status Credits if SCs are actually earned for flights booked in this fashion.

 

[Cynicor]

Then as per my last answer, they are full normal retail fares, just paid for with very poor rates.

You get SCs and points and everything else.

 

[ddelian]

I also have a bunch of Amex points and was looking at getting most value out of them - do you get status points if you transfer to Velocity and then book them? I assume not so is what the evilpuppet is doing the best option to get status points or are there other ideas?

 

[mooingchicken]

No miles or status on fares booked with velocity points,

If you have lots of points and don't mind spending more points just to get the SC's then that's a perfectly fine way to do it if award flight aren't available (otherwise I would Just book J anyway). But if it takes you a long time to save that many points then I wouldn't do it. Better off saving for J and then status doesn't really matter

 

[Alanslegal]

I've put together a half-decent balance of Amex Membership Reward points and am looking to use them for my travel in the US next year for flights on Delta or perhaps on some flights around SE Asia.

My current focus is maintaining my status with Virgin Australia so I'm hoping for some insights from members who have used AMEX MR points for booking fares with DL, SQ and/or NZ. Specifically:

• Were your fares equivalent to those booked with actual payment?
• Did you earn points/miles?
• Did you earn status credits/qualifying points/qualifying miles?
• Have you attempted to upgrade with Velocity Points/Airpoints/SkyMiles after securing your fare with AMEX MR points?

Thanks to all who reply.

When you do decide to travel to the US or Asia next year ... will you be flying J/F anyway regardless of status? If no, then I would be using your points on confirmed J/F flights. To me status is nice, but a status flyer flying in long haul economy would be close to the pits.

 

[theevilmuppet]

When you do decide to travel to the US or Asia next year ... will you be flying J/F anyway regardless of status? If no, then I would be using your points on confirmed J/F flights. To me status is nice, but a status flyer flying in long haul economy would be close to the pits.

I'm definitely going to the US, and I've got confirmed J seats with VA thanks to an upgrade.

The MR points ask for J domestic flights on DL isn't too bad, so I may go with that option.