TFC answers. How to book an award ticket using Membership rewards points.
More and more often on our social channels, in comments on articles or under our videos I receive questions about the same [...]
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More and more often on our social channels, in comments on articles or under our videos I get questions on the same topic: "How to book award tickets with American Express points."
Here's the answer. You cannot book award tickets with Membership Rewards points.
This is the only truth, this is the first concept you need to learn in order to succeed In the game of reward travel.
Award tickets are tickets paid for entirely with points, each loyalty program has its own rules, each company freely decides how many award seats to make available for each flight, e.g. British Airways guarantees a minimum of 14 seats, in the different classes, on board its intercontinental flights. This means that, at the very least, you will be able to book with avios points that number of seats.
The points that are used are those of the loyalty program, not the points Americn Express Membership Rewards. Therefore, if you want to use your Amex points to redeem an award ticket, you must. first transfer Membership Rewards from the Amex account to the desired loyalty program account, and then book the ticket.
CAUTION. When you book an airline ticket from the Amex Travel portal, the system allows you to use MR points to pay, partially or in full, for the cost of the ticket. This is one of the worst uses you can make of your painstakingly accumulated points, since it is the guaranteed minimum conversion rate i.e. 4 euros per 1000 points, the same as if you discounted your spending from your card account.
An award ticket, as mentioned, is harder to find than a paid ticket. In case you discount the points to pay for the ticket you will hold a regular coupon, while if you redeem an award ticket you will not accumulate points or status.
I hope I have cleared up one of the most common doubts for those new to this world, which is what the TFCanswers column is for-helping you better understand the rules of the game.
As always, our column TFC responds is designed to help readers better understand the rules of this game called reward travel.
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