Lucky and MilesQuest blogged earlier in the week about an offer of 30% bonus on transfers to Delta Skymiles from American Express through March 31 (registration required).

I meant to blog it for sake of completeness, in case any of y’all were going to happen to make transfers from American Express to Delta so as not to miss out on the bonus points. But it just wasn’t exciting enough to get around to, and certainly not a reason to proactively transfer from Amex to Skymiles. And since the bonus says it doesn’t post right away, it doesn’t help you transfer fewer points to top off for an award you’re about to redeem, it just gives you back more points later.

But Rene passes along a link for another bonus for first time transfers from Amex to Delta only, a 50% bonus on your transfer and 25,000 elite qualifying miles if you transfer 50,000 points or more through May 31 (registration required). As Rene points out, if you don’t have any Membership Rewards points you could sign up for an (expensive..) American Express Platinum card which gives you the ability to ‘borrow’ up to 60,000 points. Instant Silver status with Delta.

Not my cup of tea, I do have a Membership Rewards account and I’ve transferred a few small bits of miles to Delta here and there over the years to top off towards specific awards, I’m not personally eligible. I would probably do this just for the status if I were otherwise a Delta flyer — not to make silver but if it was going to make me Platinum instead of Gold. I wouldn’t do it just for the 50% bonus, since I’d prefer to hold back the flexibility of points and I still consider other best uses of Amex points worth better than 50% more than transfers to Delta. But it’s still an interesting offer, and better than the next-best one that I had recently seen out there.

This is very similar to the November/December offer, except only first-time transfers are eligible.