20% Bonus Transferring American Express Points to Qantas

by Gary Leff

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Last week American Express added Qantas Frequent Flyer as a Membership Rewards transfer partner.

Normally points transfer 1:1 from American Express to Qantas in 500 point increments instead of the usual 1000. Qantas is also a transfer partner of Capital One and Citibank, so there are plenty of ways to get and pool points into Qantas Frequent Flyer for US customers.

However through June 30 they’re offering a 20% bonus on transfers from American Express to Qantas. You’ll have to log into your account to see this offer.

Qantas is useful for inexpensive short distance awards on oneworld airlines, and for redemptions on partners like El Al.

Where I’ve found the greatest use for Qantas points is redeeming for medium-distance travel on Emirates. Qantas and Emirates are partners. Qantas awards are distance based. You can fly Emirates from New York JFK to Milan for 60,000 Qantas miles (plus taxes and fees) each way in business class. In contrast if you were spending Alaska Airlines miles it’s 105,000 miles each way.


Emirates Business Class Bar

I put airfare spending on my Platinum Card, and restaurant and grocery spend on my American Express® Gold Card, and I can now transfer the points from those latter two cards to:

  • Star Alliance: Aeroplan, ANA, Singapore, Avianca
  • oneworld: AsiaMiles, British Airways, Iberia, Qantas
  • SkyTeam: Aeromexico, Alitalia, Air France KLM, Delta
  • Non-alliance: Etihad, Emirates, El Al, Hawaiian, JetBlue, Aer Lingus, Virgin Atlantic
  • Hotels: Choice, Hilton, Marriott

With this transfer bonus and leveraging earn bonuses, $10,000 in airfare spend on a Platinum Card would yield 50,000 American Express points which would transfer to 60,000 Qantas points and be sufficient miles for a one-way business class flight between New York and Milan. Still I would not proactively transfer just to take advantage of this bonus, but only use it if I had specific near-term use for the points.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Editorial note: any opinions, analyses, reviews or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any card issuer. Comments made in response to this post are not provided or commissioned nor have they been reviewed, approved, or otherwise endorsed by any bank. It is not the responsibility of advertisers Citibank, Chase, American Express, Barclays, Capital One or any other advertiser to ensure that questions are answered, either. Terms and limitations apply to all offers.

Pingbacks

  1. […] VFTW noted that, in addition to being quietly added as a partner, Amex has now incentivized transfers to their new partner, Qantas, with a 20% transfer bonus. Normally these points transfer 1:1, with redemptions being just 500 points, half of what most other partners require for a minimum, a 1000. The transfer bonus expires on June 30th, 2019. Let’s take a look at the offer and then some instances in which it could make sense to utilize the program, and this bonus. […]

  2. […] Then God Save The Points shared how Citi could offer you this too: CITI 30% TRANSFER BONUS TO VIRGIN ATLANTIC UNLOCKS CRAZY VALUE. Next View From The Wing Shared: Capital One Reveals Air France KLM June Promo Awards and 20% Miles Transfer Bonus. Four days later One Mile At A Time shared: LifeMiles Offering 25% Citi & Hotel Transfer Bonus. Two days after that View From The Wing came back with: 20% Bonus Transferring American Express Points to Qantas. […]

Comments

  2. Prob a dumb question can this be stacked with the 15 % offer Qantas is offering separately?
    They have a 30% offer too but u have transfer 2 mil or more points yikes

  4. Tried to link my AmEx acct to my Qantas acct, and received an error message. Called AmEx customer service, and was told that the transfer to Qantas is not streamlined yet. Did anybody else have a problem with the transfer?

  5. be careful qantas has very high taxes and fees on there reward flights, on international they can be in the hundreds of dollars and short flights are expensive as well. Anything but coach reward seats are hard to come by on international flights as well.

    From what I have read there are plenty of better options out there.

Comments are closed.