United States AMEX Rewards to QANTAS FF???

[evan.sams]

Hi All

I've got a little bit of a tricky one, and can't seem to find the answer, despite a bit of googling. Perhaps someone here can help?

My parents have a decent amount of American Express Rewards points, in a US account. They don't have much use for them, and have offered to transfer them to my QANTAS FF account, if I can work out how.

From looking on the US Amex site, they can transfer to lots of airlines, including fellow One World affiliate British Airways. But it doesn't look like QANTAS is an option.

Any thoughts here? Can I possibly create a BA FF account, and then transfer to QANTAS through One World? Am I missing something painfully simple here?

Any help would be much appreciated!!

FYI I've posted this in both the QANTAS FF and AMEX forums, to cover my bases ...

Thanks everyone!!

 

[newformula]

In a nutshell, either
1) US Membership Rewards (MR) - > Starwood Preferred Guest - > Qantas (or if not SPG, Hilton Hhonors, probably, too).
2) US MR - > AU MR (via an international MR transfer, if they/you own a Platinum Charge card) - > Qantas.

Option 1 is by far the easiest.

 

[pshepvic]

Even with Amex in Australia, you can't transfer MR points to Qantas from the standard MR Ascent program. You can only transfer from the Premium program available with the Platinum and Centurion cards. Be aware of that if you do try option 2 above.

Note that option 1 is no longer available with SPG - you cannot transfer from SPG to Qantas anymore. HHonors is available but you might want to consider the transfer rate first - to transfer from Amex to HHonors is 1,000 points to get 1,500 Hilton points, but then that only converts at 10,000 Hilton points for 1500 Qantas points. So if you transferred 100,000 Amex points you'd only end up with 22,500 Qantas points. Hardly worth it IMHO.

 

[k3nnis]

I thought it's 1000 MR to 1000 HH?

 

[serfty]

Havn't been able to transfer from SPG to QFF for a couple of years.

Best bet is to transfer to AAdvantage and book QF flights from there.

Posted on a wing and a prayer ...

 

[cove]

Serfty you beat me to it....I read how it takes a lot less AA points to book QF flights.
My American Amex is currently a points warehouse and I will take my time transferring them.

 

[pshepvic]

I was going to suggest transfer to AA but when I went to the US Amex site, AA wasn't listed as a partner. Maybe I clicked the wrong link or something, but it definitely didn't appear in the section I was looking at.


Sent from my iPhone using AustFreqFly app

 

[pshepvic]

I thought it's 1000 MR to 1000 HH?

In Australia yes, but in the US it is 1500.


Sent from my iPhone using AustFreqFly app

 

[k3nnis]

oh ok thanks

 

[Supersonic Swinger]

I'm not sure that a card holder can transfer Amex points to accounts which are in someone else's name.

Not sure why on earth you would want to transfer them to Qantas anyway, they are much better value transferred to another program. 175,000 Cathay Asia Miles gets you Australia-Europe return in Business, it takes 256,000 with Qantas. Round-the-World First Class takes 335,000 Asia Miles, you'd need 420,000 on Qantas.

Probably a better idea for your parents to open up an account in their name with one of the airline partners you can transfer directly to from Amex US and redeem them by making bookings for you from that account.

And note AA isn't a direct transfer partner of Amex US, you would have to transfer them to SPG at a rate of 2:1, and then move them 1:1.25 to AA.

 

[newformula]

I jumped in early, and wrong. Had no idea SPG -> Qantas wasn't an option, I just figured SPG can transfer pretty much anywhere, so Qantas *must* be an option.
And agree that unless the OP's parents have a haul of QFF points they want to top up, much better value to be had by using Asia Miles.

 

[serfty]

I jumped in early, and wrong. Had no idea SPG -> Qantas wasn't an option, I just figured SPG can transfer pretty much anywhere, so Qantas *must* be an option.
And agree that unless the OP's parents have a haul of QFF points they want to top up, much better value to be had by using Asia Miles.

Qantas and SPG became specifically disassociated around the time 2 or three years ago when Qantas decided to force most CC reward programs to either "direct sweep" to QFF or have no ability to transfer to QFF at all.