The Offer
- Receive a 25% transfer bonus when you transfer American Express Membership Rewards points to Hawaiian Airlines HawaiianMiles. The standard rate is 1:1, so this means it would be 1:1.25. So if you transfer 1,000 Membership Rewards you’d receive 1,250 HawaiianMiles.
The Fine Print
- Valid until June 21st, 2017
Hawaiian Airline Mile Uses
You can get flights for 40,000 miles round trip with the card from mainland USA to Hawaii (35,000 with the Hawaiian credit card), but there isn’t a lot of space available. More space is available at the 25,000-30,000 one way pricing. Another good use of the miles is for inter-island flights in Hawaii; they come out at 7,500 miles per one way trip.
You can transfer Hawaiian Miles to Hilton. These miles cannot be transferred to Hilton due to this fine print:
Note: Transfers will be made immediately, however, please allow up to 48 hours for the transfer to be complete. Points transferred into HawaiianMiles accounts may not be transferred to a third party loyalty program.
Our Verdict
This is the highest transfer bonus American Express offers on transfers to Hawaiian. Here are the historical bonuses they have offered:
- June 6th – 21st, 2016: 25% bonus
- December 8th – 21st, 2015: 25% bonus
- June 11th – June 23rd, 2014: 20% bonus
They offered the same bonus last year. You can view a full history of all American Express transfer bonuses by going here. At the moment they are not offering any other transfer bonuses.
I think with Delta flights to each and every HI island with GREAT availability (at least from LAX) at 25K points round trip when booked via Korean is almost impossible to beat. Yes it is a hassle to book Delta through Korean, but the fact that you can reserve the award ticket without any miles in the account and buy it out just 3 days before the actual flight adds even more value to that option.
Definitely pass on Amex to Hawaiian transfer.
@VL – Is there a blog post/more info somewhere on how to book Delta via Korean? This sounds very interesting. Thanks!
Just google korean air and hawaii you will find a TPG post.
I was going to describe the process, but found the article which does it pretty well (see below).
https://www.milevalue.com/guide-to-booking-delta-flights-to-hawaii-for-25000-korean-miles-roundtrip-45k-in-first/
Good luck.
Personally, I think this is the least valuable domestic airline currency…even worse than aa. Finding a mainland to Hawaii flight that even approaches 1¢ a mile is even harder than finding an AA saver award. That being said, I’ve used some Hawaiian miles for inter island flights at a reasonable level. Hard pass.
This is a good offer for someone who has flexible dates in the winter. As you can get two non stop round trips to Hawaii for just 64K Amex points with this offer (totaling 80K hawaiian miles).
But for most dates one round trip is more like in the 50-80K range.
35,000 RT HI-continental US is only if you have the Hawaiian Airlines cc. Otherwise, it will cost 40,000 miles RT. If you don’t have the credit card though, availability is more common in the 25,000 – 30,000 range minimum.
Thanks, P. Updated post.