As many of you know, the last day to transfer American Express Membership Rewards points to Continental Airlines is tomorrow, September 30. There are several reasons this is a big deal for many with a lot of AMEX Membership Rewards points:
Why You Should Transfer Membership Rewards Points to Continental:
- Continental/United has the best deal for first class awards (140,000 miles) between the US and Asia, now that Aeroplan has raised their price from 120,000 to 175,000. See The 10 Best Premium Cabin Award Redemption Values and American Express Membership Rewards Changes. Also, British Airways will be increasing the price of their single partner awards in November (new award chart not released yet). See Time to Redeem British Airways for Cathay Pacific First Class
- Continental has lower taxes and fees when it comes to awards, including international business and first class awards
- Continental and United allow one-way awards; Aeroplan and ANA do not.
- Via Continental (and United, since you can transfer points freely between them) you have access to a number of non-alliance partners, such as Virgin Atlantic, Emirates, Qatar and others. See Best Secret Out of Alliance Award Redemptions.
Why You Shouldn't Transfer ALL Your Membership Rewards Points to Continental:
- It's never wise to have all your points in one program. Ben's rule of thumb is a good one: You should never have so many miles in a single program that you couldn't redeem them within 6 months notice if the program award chart is devalued.
- The corollary to this is that, even with the devaluations, Membership Rewards is still a more flexible program than Continental or other airline frequent flyer programs, since you can't transfer miles from those to another airline or points program
- Opportunity cost: another transfer option that also expires tomorrow, September 30, is the 50% Bonus on first-time American Express Membership Rewards transfers to Delta. If you transfer 100,000 or more points, you'll also receive a 25,000 Elite Qualifying Miles (elite status lasts through February 2013). You must first register for this promotion, then transfer miles. So if, for example, you want to book an award ticket to Australia, your best best would be on V Australia using Delta Miles. See The 10 Best Premium Cabin Award Redemption Values
- You can also transfer Chase Ultimate Rewards points (from the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, which has a 50,000 point bonus) to Continental on a 1:1 basis, so that may be another reason to instead transfer to Delta with the transfer bonus, if you have a use for Delta awards.
- American Express Membership Rewards points don't expire; Continental's expire after 18 months of inactivity (although it's not hard to keep them active). Consider tracking them with Award Wallet or similar. See My Top Flight and Points Management Tools
Let's say you've made the decision to pull the trigger and your ready to transfer some Membership Rewards points to Continental. If you haven't transferred before, here's a step by step for where to find the link and how to do it:
1. Log in to your American Express credit card account
2. In the right column, click on the “View Points Summary” link
3. Go to the “Use Points” tab and select “Airlines” from the dropdown:
4. Select “Continental Airlines” from the left column
5. On the next page, click on the Continental logo, to go to this page:
Scroll down on this page and you can enter in the number of points you'd like to transfer (in increments of 1000 points). Points transfer to Continental on a 1:1 basis.
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