Chase FINALLY has a transfer bonus!

Great news today! Chase announced a 30% bonus when you transfer Ultimate Rewards points to British Airways Avios points. Historically, Amex has these kinds of bonuses a few times a year, and they can dramatically increase the value of your Membership Rewards points.

Since we know that Avios points are near-useless for flights to the UK, due to their criminally-high surcharges, what ARE they good for?

Last-minute/direct domestic flights in all classes

This bonus would have saved me a bundle when I booked a last minute flight from NYC to Louisville, Kentucky on their partner, American Airlines. The cheapest direct flight I could find was $735, and all I'd have needed for a points reward was 11,000 Amex points – bringing the value of my Amex points to well over 6¢ each. Furthermore, doing a partner reward on American Airlines via British Airways lets you avoid American's annoying $75 "close-in" fee when you book a flight that's fewer than 21 days away. I've personally used Avios to book AA flights from NYC to Montreal and Phoenix.

 

Expensive intra-Asia flights

Earlier this year, I used the transfer bonus to book a US$1300 ticket from Hong Kong to Tokyo on Cathay Pacific for 14,500 Amex points and a $1900 ticket from Tokyo to Taipei on Japan Airlines for the same amount (11¢ per point!). While it's not in Asia, our flight home from Jordan on partner Royal Jordanian was also a great Avios redemption at 4.7¢ per point.

 

Long-haul flights to Asia with JAL

If the transfer had been in effect when I booked our Japan Airlines flight with British Airways miles, our effective cents-per-point would have jumped from 5.4¢ to 7.5¢. They also have great award availability in JAL's Premium Economy.

Thoughts

All of this has me wondering aloud if I should speculatively transfer some points into my near-empty Avios account... I'm thinking it might be a good idea to have just enough of them lying around for a domestic short-haul flight like the Louisville one. Beyond that, I'm not so sure. We don't have any big trips planned for the rest of the year, nor do we have anything on the horizon for early 2020, so keeping the points in a flexible currency (Chase UR points can be transferred to United, Singapore, Virgin Atlantic, and a few others) seems like the smartest choice for now.

Overall, though, I'm loving this new development from Chase. While their Sapphire card is quite popular, it's been mostly bad news from them the past couple of years – the loss of Korean Air and Amtrak as transfer partners was particularly painful since we've used those options frequently in the past. I'd love to see them add another transfer partner and potentially do a transfer bonus with another partner. Amex routinely has transfer bonuses to Virgin Atlantic, and that could be a great deal if we decide to go back to Asia on their partner ANA again.


The transfer bonus is in effect until 16 June 2019.