Bad information, Alaska Airlines followers: American Express Membership Rewards will end transfers to HawaiianMiles on June 30, 2025.
This successfully ends transfers from Membership Rewards to Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan.
Since the center of final yr, HawaiianMiles have been transferable to Alaska miles, giving Amex cardholders an oblique method to switch their Membership Rewards factors to Alaska Airlines. Alaska Airlines launched this characteristic after it acquired the Honolulu-based Hawaiian Airlines final yr.
While there isn’t any official assertion from American Express on the time of writing, the financial institution is posting this information on the factors switch web page on the American Express web site and cell app.
This offers American Express cardholders a few month and a half to switch their factors to HawaiianMiles (after which to Mileage Plan). While we do not normally suggest speculative transfers from a bank card factors program to a specific airline or lodge companion, this could possibly be an exception for Alaska Airlines and Oneworld followers. That’s as a result of Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan provides among the greatest award charges on short-haul home flights and transatlantic business-class flights from the East Coast.
For instance, an economic system flight on American Airlines with a distance of beneath 700 miles required simply 4,500 Alaska miles, and a transatlantic business-class flight between 1,501 and three,500 miles begins at simply 45,000 miles on companion airways corresponding to Aer Lingus. In many circumstances, these costs are considerably decrease than competing Oneworld loyalty applications like American Airlines AAdvantage.
Related: You might want to switch your Amex factors to HawaiianMiles (after which to Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan) quickly
How to switch Membership Rewards factors to Hawaiian Airlines (and Alaska Airlines)
Transferring Amex Membership Rewards factors to Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan is a two-step course of.
First, you want to switch your Membership Rewards to HawaiianMiles in your American Express account’s “Rewards & Benefits” web page. You can switch up to 999,000 Membership Rewards factors to Hawaiian per day. In our expertise, Membership Rewards factors are transferred immediately to Hawaiian, although Amex says it may take up to two days.
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If you intend to switch factors from Membership Rewards to Hawaiian earlier than June 30, 2025, word that you just will pay an excise tax offset payment of 0.06 cents per mile, up to a most of $99 per switch. You can cost this payment to an American Express card or cowl it with Membership Rewards factors. However, we don’t suggest redeeming factors to cowl the payment, since you may solely get 0.5 cents per level in worth.
Once you switch Membership Rewards factors to Hawaiian, you should use the airline’s factors switch device to transfer factors between your Hawaiian and Alaska accounts. These transfers additionally course of immediately usually.
Bottom line
While it is unlucky that Membership Rewards will now not find a way to switch factors to Hawaiian Airlines (and, by proxy, Alaska Airlines), we anticipated this alteration. Alaska Airlines has been clear about its plans to quickly merge HawaiianMiles into the Mileage Plan and finally part out bank card transfers.
That mentioned, Bilt Rewards switch to Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan, too, so vacationers nonetheless have a technique to earn Alaska miles with a transferable factors card.
If you intend to fly with Alaska and its companions quickly, you may take into account transferring a few of your Membership Rewards factors to HawaiianMiles (after which to Mileage Plan) earlier than it is too late. Alaska miles are among the many most useful within the factors and miles area, largely due to this system’s low award costs and an intensive checklist of nonalliance companions. If you do that, nonetheless, you will quit some flexibility and will go away your Alaska miles open to devaluation for those who do not redeem them rapidly.
