A couple of days ago, I wrote about how Club Vistara was showing up on the American Express Membership Rewards transfer portal, and InterMiles and Etihad Guest had gone missing.
It turns out that Etihad Guest and InterMiles are still around as partners for transfers with American Express Membership Rewards. A representative of American Express dropped me this note with respect to Intermiles:
Amex went live with Vistara Miles conversion earlier this week, however they still have InterMiles as a transfer partner – due to some tech changes at the backend, it will appear on the Website only by end of next week.
I can understand technology changes. It must have to do with the rebranding of JetPrivilege to InterMiles.
As for Etihad, the ability to transfer miles online has now returned to the website itself and you can continue to transfer American Express Membership Rewards to Etihad Guest miles.
I would expect the situation to be fluid for a few days before all the partners show up concurrently on the website, but in effect, this is an enhancement and not a decrease in the value of Membership Rewards points. Indian Amex Membership Rewards can transfer to the following programmes:
- Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer (2 MR: 1 KF point)
- Emirates Skywards (2 MR: 1 EK point)
- Etihad Guest (2 MR: 1 EY point)
- Virgin Atlantic Flying Club (2 MR: 1 VS point)
- British Airways Executive Club (2 MR: 1 BA point)
- Qatar Airways Privilege Club (2 MR: 1 QR point)
- Finnair Plus (2 MR: 1 AY point)
- InterMiles/JetPrivilege (2 MR: 1 InterMile)
- Club Vistra (3 MR: 1 UK point)
- Cathay Pacific Asia Miles (2 MR: 1 CX point)
- Hilton Honors (1 MR: 0.9 HH point)
- Marriott Bonvoy (1 MR: 1 MB point)
The following cards are going to be able to transfer American Express Membership Rewards to Club Vistara points:
- The American Express Centurion Card
- The American Express Platinum Card
- The American Express Gold Card
- The American Express Platinum Reserve Credit Card
- The American Express Platinum Travel Credit Card (Free)
- The American Express Platinum Corporate Card
- The American Express Corporate Card
- The American Express Green Card
- The American Express Membership RewardsCredit Card (Free)
For those of you who were missing these transfer partners, this is good news, because now there is one more transfer partner, and nothing gets taken away from the original pile of partners as well.
What do you make of this enhancement from American Express?
The transfer ratio for Club Vistra (3 MR: 1 UK point) is disappointing. Not sure what is the logic behind this as other airlines have transfer ratio of 2:1.