My Thought Process on Taking Advantage of Amex/Hawaiian Transfer in the Eleventh Hour

This is a topic that’s getting a lot of attention in the hobby right now, and for a good reason. As of June 30th, Amex Membership Rewards points will no longer transfer to Hawaiian miles, and with that dies an opportunity to easily acquire Alaska currency. So, the question is, should you take advantage of it in the next couple of days? As with many things in miles and points hobby, the answer is “it depends.”

Do you live near Alaska hub and happen to have a lot of MR points (300k or more) with no immediate plans for them? Then the answer is easy. If you fly occasionally, you should eventually put them to good use and get at least 1.5 CPM, even by conservative estimates. The same logic applies to those who live near AA hub. Even though it’s not quite a no-brainer as the former example, Alaska miles can unlock very cheap AA redemptions, with some costing just 4,500 miles one-way.

Of course, if you are sitting on  millions of AA or Alaska miles, it’s a different story. There is no way I would transfer any more points in that case unless you redeem that much per year. It’s simply too risky, as all airline programs devalue. Right now Alaska is getting an influx of probably billions of new miles due to closing of the Amex loophole. You don’t have to be a genius to know that it will inevitably lead to devaluation of the program. How soon? Nobody knows. But that’s why you have to be careful with speculative transfers.

If you don’t live near Alaska or AA hub and rarely find good uses for Alaska miles, then it probably makes sense to sit that one out. None of us have a crystal ball, so don’t let the FOMO dictate where you park your valuable MR points without a clear path for liquidation.

My personal situation

Alaska miles were never all that useful to me until the last two years. I ended up burning a ton of them on flights to Seattle, South America and Easter Island. I never got spectacular value, but a solid return (for me) of 1.1-1.3 CPM. In both cases, Alaska program offered the best deal in town.

As far as my future plans go, this currency may come in handy for those as well. I am determined to organize an Alaska cruise in 2027, since my MIL has requested it. In her words, she wants to go  one more time before she dies. So, yeah, it’s a priority. I wish we could go next year, but my husband won’t have enough time off left for everything we plan to do there. Granted, other airlines fly to Alaska, and often at a  cheaper rate via miles. Still, if my Plan A (which I’ll get to in a minute), doesn’t work out, we have a clear path to liquidate this currency if needed. And with five people, you run out of miles pretty quickly.

However, my main interest in transferring MR points to Alaska has to do with my daughter’s graduation trip to Japan next year. Alaska is only one of two programs that doesn’t pass along fuel surcharges on JAL flights, our preferred carrier. The other one is AAdvantage. We had a decent experience with JAL on our last trip, plus, Alaska and AA happen to charge reasonable rate on premium economy and business class.

I will start booking our award flights pretty soon, though most won’t be available until the transfer from Amex is cut off. So , I had to make a decision whether to transfer speculatively. Thanks to some unexpected bills, I got 175k signup bonus from new Amex Platinum deposited just a  week ago, so it was now or never. I should also mention that Bank of America has banned me (for life?), so my husband is the only one who is able to acquire new Alaska credit card bonuses, and even that’s not guaranteed.

Here is my starting point:

1) 100k Alaska miles (in my account) and 50k Alaska miles (in my husband’s account)

2) 77k AAdvantage miles (in my account) and 59k AA miles (in my husband’s account)

My goals:

To get three one-way tickets in premium economy and three one-way business-class tickets. Ideally, I would want to fly in business class  to Japan because it’s a longer flight, but we’ll take anything. Normally, I’m OK with economy seats, but most flights to Japan are 12 hours long or more. That’s brutal, though we will slum it if needed. We have before, with longest coach flight being from Australia (14 hours). Still, miles may unlock a better option, and I would be a fool not to at least try.

Limitations:

All the business-class seats have already been scooped up by Avios and Cathay program users, since they get access to JAL tickets earlier than Alaska and AA programs. There are still premium economy seats left here and there, but none for the dates I need. And our dates are pretty set, since I plan to leave on the day of my daughter’s High School graduation ceremony. It will take place in the morning, and in the evening we will hopefully be taking our positioning flight to the west coast airport.

What’s crazy is that even regular JAL economy has been mostly scooped up according to my BA search. Unless JAL dumps extra award seats to Alaska and AA programs, it will be slim or no pickings for yours truly. That’s quite a contrast to booking award seats in 2022, when we were able to secure four business seats via AAdvantage from LAX- Osaka without any issues. That’s completely unrealistic now.

I would have to rely on sporadic business-class and premium economy award availability that may or may not pop up randomly before next June. In all likelihood, something should turn up 14 days before our departure date. I am flexible, as long as we end up in Tokyo, and as long as we only have to make one connection. There are no nonstop flights from Florida to Japan anyway.

Award seats on JAL business class definitely start to pop up the closer you get to your departure date. In my experience, Chicago is the best of the bunch, and when using AAdvantage program, it’s often possible to tack on a flight to Florida at no extra cost (60k miles per ticket total).

Of course, I would only have AA miles for two one-way tickets, but I can book the third one through Alaska program (without Florida extension) for 75k miles. Then we would just book that last leg with cash or by using AA miles. I hate to pay more, but would in this case to secure three seats. The biggest unknown is whether AAdvantage will devalue its program before next June. I have a feeling it will, though  hope I’m wrong.

It goes without saying that I would want to secure something beforehand. I would be a nervous wreck if we had to wait until 14 days before departure. That’s not how I operate. If JAL seats (in any class) are completely gone, there is always an option to burn miles on AA or Alaska-operated flights to Japan.

Unfortunately, AA tends to often charge ridiculous prices on its own weekend flights. Our dates aren’t released yet, but similar one-way tickets tend to run at 57k or more AA miles from Dallas, LAX or JFK. That’s simply too much, as paying cash for roundtrip flights from LAX is the way to go in that case:

However, these tickets are non-refundable and will squash my chances of flying in business class via miles.

On the other hand, Seattle-Tokyo economy seats operated by Hawaiian airlines tend to run at 42.5k Alaska miles one-way on weekends, 30k miles on weekdays. That’s much better, though we would need to book the former. These tickets would be completely refundable, which is a huge plus.

What I ended up doing

I went ahead and transferred 28k MR points to my Alaska account (via Hawaiian) and 78k MR points to my husband’s account. So, we now each have 128k Alaska miles. Why that amount? That way we can at least book “placeholder” roundtrip flights for three people from Seattle to Tokyo in economy if needed. I have Delta miles I can use for one-way tickets from Orlando to Seattle and will burn AA miles for nonstop flight from Seattle to Miami. Or vice versa. That way we will at least have something in place. It’s not an ideal option, but all the tickets would be 100% refundable, which is key to my plan.

Let’s say there is award availability for business class. I would use AA miles from our accounts for two tickets and 75k Alaska miles for the third one. If it happens to be from/to Seattle, then the cost is also 60k Alaska miles, but I’m not counting on that.

That would leave me with more than enough miles for premium economy (50k Alaska miles, 40k from Seattle one-way) at current rates. But let’s say AAdvantage raises its rates on JAL business class and matches Alaska pricing. Then I would use one AA account for business class and the other one for premium economy, if that becomes available. Basically, mix and match.

The bottom line is, I will have just enough Alaska miles for roundtrip economy tickets, with the goal of switching to something better later on. That should provide me with hours of entertainment, no doubt. I’m too cheap to pay for award alerts, and too much of a control freak.

There is also a possibility to simply use my Chase UR points on revenue flights later on, and I may pursue this option if nothing better turns up. I’ve recently converted my Chase Freedom Flex to Chase Sapphire Reserve in order to lock in 1.5 cents option on travel. In that case, I will simply use up Alaska miles on flights to Anchorage and Seattle, my Plan B.

BTW, even though the new Chase Sapphire Reserve no longer has this option, I think the signup bonus itself (100k points+$500 travel credit via Chase portal) is most definitely worth pursuing despite high annual fee. Read Nancy’s post here

My referral link for CSR or CSP

Nancy’s referral link for CSR or CSP

Final thoughts 

I don’t know if my convoluted reasoning will be helpful to anyone, and frankly, this isn’t “life or death” kind of thing. In addition, airline programs devalue all the time, and there is no guarantee any JAL business availability will even turn up. Well, we will slum it in the back, we have before. Many times.

Still, it could makes sense to give this option some thought, as the opportunity to transfer from Amex to Alaska will likely never be available again. But who knows? This hobby is full of surprises, that’s what makes it fun.