Like most travel sites, American Express Travel lets you search for airfare within a date range and from a variety of airlines. You can book any available flight with your rewards starting at 5, points. The average value per point for airfare is 1 cent. Any American Express cardholder could book this flight for 30, points. That puts your net cost at 19, points. A note of caution: Airfare on American Express Travel can run higher than average.
The American Express Travel portal is a full-fledged travel site that lets you book all kinds of travel, including hotels , vacation packages and cruises. All travel booked through the American Express Travel portal besides airfare is booked at a rate of 0. This makes it a relatively unattractive option for using your American Express points. Another travel option is using Membership Rewards points to bid for upgrades, which American Express introduced in On 21 different airlines, you can use your Membership Rewards at a value of 1 cent per point toward upgrading an economy cash ticket to a premium cabin ticket.
American Express has 22 travel partners — including several major airlines that can take you practically anywhere you want to travel — and your points transfer at a rate to most of them.
The value per point varies wildly by each program, and you also need to consider that American Express charges an excise fee of 0.
Using the travel portal provides a fixed cost for your points and is simpler. You should also stick with using them for flights at the 1 cent per point rate. The 0. While many options are available for you to spend your Amex points on gift cards or through shopping partners like Amazon, PayPal, Best Buy and Expedia, these generally provide poor value and are not recommended in most cases.
Most people will get the best value of their points either transferring to airline or hotel partners or booking airfare directly through the American Express travel portal. It can pay to spend a bit of time comparing the cost in cash via Amex Travel to the cost it would be in points if you transferred to a partner to see which one makes sense for you. The editorial content on this page is based solely on the objective assessment of our writers and is not driven by advertising dollars.
It has not been provided or commissioned by the credit card issuers. However, we may receive compensation when you click on links to products from our partners.
Robin Ratcliff is a former CreditCards. His home base is in Cincinnati, but he tries to travel the world as much as possible with his wife and six kids. Essential reads, delivered straight to your inbox. By providing my email address, I agree to CreditCards. Your credit cards journey is officially underway. An introductory APR is a low promotional interest rate that credit card companies often give new customers for a set number of months after they open an account. Some credit cards offer introductory APRs on purchases, balance transfers or both.
Choose the eligible charges you want to cover with points —. Just log in and go. A check will appear when you have selected the eligible charge. Additional Card Members are not eligible to use this feature. A minimum of 1, Membership Rewards points in your program account is required and you may use. Membership Rewards points only towards the entire amount of an eligible charge. Using Points for Your Charges When you use points for your charges, you are using points towards specific, eligible charges.
Account managers and Rewards managers may be eligible to use points by calling the number on the back of your Card but are not eligible to use points online. Stairways to heaven! We asked a former house raider to reveal the surprising weak points in our writer's home Home movers using Purplebricks face CHAOS as conveyancer Premier Property Lawyers shuts due to a security breach Electric cars will 'remain the preserve of the wealthy' without more grants and incentives to make them affordable for all drivers, MPs warned Previous.
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