AMEX 30% Transfer Bonus to Virgin Atlantic Flying Club

AMEX Membership Rewards Has a 30% Transfer Bonus to Virgin Atlantic Flying Club. Here are the details:

Log into your AMEX Membership Rewards account and navigate to the Transfer Points area to view the 30% transfer bonus to Virgin Atlantic Flying Club
Transfer points with the 30% bonus until July 1, 2019, 11:59pm MT
Minimum transfer is 1000 Membership Rewards points
Bonus Flying Club miles are awarded at the time of the transfer
Note that transfers of AMEX Membership Rewards points that result in more than 999,999 Flying Club miles will not be accepted
Transfers are permanent: AMEX Membership Rewards points transferred to Flying Club may not be transferred back to Membership Rewards points

While the intention by Virgin Atlantic is to promote bookings on its own metal, award bookings on Virgin Atlantic incur hefty fuel surcharges, so I'd avoid redemptions on Virgin Atlantic itself.

The highest value use of Flying Club miles, instead, is ANA First Class, although note that these awards must be round trip and there's no open jaw allowed, unlike ANA Mileage Club, which does permit open jaws. We've redeemed 120,000 Flying Club miles a couple times now for ANA First Class roundtrip for NYC to Tokyo, always after taking advantage of the 30% transfer bonus from AMEX. That's equivalent to 93,000 AMEX Membership Rewards points for a flight that retailed for our dates for over $21,000, yielding over 22 cents per AMEX Membership Rewards point in value.

Check out my ANA First Class Review from last year, and also my husband's ANA First Class video, below:

For those more inclined to fly Delta, this can also be a good use of Flying Club miles, as Delta awards are typically less expensive using Flying Club miles than with Delta's own SkyMiles. For example, this one way from Atlanta to Tokyo Narita in Delta One Business Class is 60,000 Flying Club miles, with just $5.60 in taxes.