Which airlines can you transfer Amex Membership Rewards points to?

Amex points can be more powerful than Avios

In the UK there’s an insatiable appetite for Avios points, and for good reason. You can use them on BA, Qatar, Finnair, Iberia and Aer Lingus. You also have some outstanding credit card options: the two BA Amex cards and the Avios Barclaycard. However, there are a lot more airlines out there….

Why would you want to avoid Avios?

There’s a limited supply of Avios seats with BA, despite there being guaranteed award seats on every flight. It feels like getting the right dates to your chosen destination is harder than ever.

You can use Avios points across a number of airlines. You can even use the BA Companion Voucher across other airlines. However, you might find, as we often have, that they have fewer reward seats on offer than BA.

In this situation, you might want to switch your return flight to another airline, or you could do just the outbound or inbound leg with BA and fly with someone else on the opposing trips.

An example of partly using BA for award seats

We wanted to fly to Singapore in late 2025. It’s a beautiful country; our last two trips have been memorable. When we searched, there were zero first-class seats available and only a single outbound flight in business. If we relied solely on Avios points, then our options would be:

1. Try to book a business class flight as soon as the seats become available, so after midnight GMT, 355 days before we wanted to travel.
2. Keep checking availability to see if any seats before then open up. There are some great tools that will automatically check Avios availability, but none of them will show the extra seats that a Premium Plus Companion voucher gives you.

We were eager to lock in our holiday, so we looked for alternatives.

Where Membership Reward Points Become Useful

This is where the Membership Rewards points came in handy. Firstly we found BA availability for flights to Shanghai. This gave us the option of spending a few nights in a city that we had always wanted to visit.

I knew that I could transfer Amex points to Singapore Airlines, so we found availability for Shanghai to Singapore. Then around 10 days later, a direct flight from Singapore back to Manchester.

Finding flights is one thing. You then have to transfer the points into the airlines programme. Luckily I already had a Singapore Airlines Krisflyer account setup, but the Amex transfer can – according to their website – take up to 15 days.

My approach to this trip had its downsides:

1. We used a companion voucher to get us to Shanghai. As this was one way, it meant we missed out on the full value of the voucher
   • We could have used a Barclays Upgrade voucher, but it saved us around 40,000 Avios by using the companion voucher
2. We used a lot more points for this trip than if we flew direct with BA but…
   • The trip includes a segment with Singapore’s First Suite on the A380. This was something we have always wanted to do.
   • We get to see a city on our bucket list (Shanghai).

So in my view Amex points don’t give you a cheaper alternative, they just give you more options. And some of those options are more exciting than flying direct with BA. Earlier this year we flew in Etihad’s The Residence, and a few years before that we flew First Class with Emirates.

Which airlines can you transfer Amex points to directly?

Here’s a list of airlines which you can transfer UK American Express membership reward points.

Note that this is not the list of airlines you can book – further down I share how you can book a lot more through partnerships.

• Air France (Flying Blue) at a 1:1 ratio
• Cathay Pacific (Asia Miles) at a 1:1 ratio
• British Airways (The Club) at a 1:1 ratio
• Delta (Skymiles) at a 1000:1000 ratio
• Emirates (Skywards) at a 4:3 ratio
• Etihad (Etihad Guest) at a 1:1 ratio
• Iberia (Iberia Plus) at a 1:1 ratio
• KLM (Flying Blue) at a 1:1 ratio
• Qantas (Frequent Flyer) at a 1:1 ratio
• Qatar (Priviledge Club) at a 1:1 ratio
• SAS (EuroBonus) at a 1:1 ratio
• Singapore (KrisFlyer) at a 3:2 ratio
• Virgin Atlantic (Flying Club) at a 1:1 ratio

As you can see, most airlines operate at a 1:1 ratio. There is a minimum number of points required for each transfer, but these are 1,000 points or less so it’s not too restrictive.

The time it takes for a transfer ranges from instant (Virgin) to around five days for most other airines. The one exception is Singapore Airlines, which estimates a transfer time of 15 days. In my experience, that is very much the top end. Our points transfer happened in five days with Singapore.

If you happen to own a UK Currency Card (In EUR or USD) then you’ll also be able to transfer points to

• Malaysia Airlines (Enrich) at a 1:1 ratio

There is one other advantage to transferring MR points from a currency card. The ratio for Singapore remains at 3:2, which means that you get more value for your points than a GBP card (as a Euro or US Dollar is worth less than a British Pound).

Which airlines can you fly using Amex points?

Leveraging airline partnerships means there are plenty more options open to you. Here are some of the major airlines that you can book using Amex points, by transferring them to one of the airlines above.

• American Airlines (via BA, Qatar)
• Alaskan Airlines (via BA).
• Finnair (via BA, or transfer Avios from BA to Finnair)
• Royal Air Maroc (via BA)
• Royal Jordanian (via BA)
• Sri Lankan Airlines (via BA)
• Turkish Airlines (via Singapore)