While I’m normally against speculative transfers, I decided to transfer 100,000 Amex points to Hawaiian Airlines this afternoon — I figured I’d share my thinking behind this transfer, so you can decide if it’s right for you.
Here’s why I decided to make the transfer:
You can transfer HawaiianMiles to Alaska’s Mileage Plan miles
I’ve never used HawaiianMiles, but I am a big fan of Alaska miles, especially now that you earn Alaska elite-qualifying miles for award flights booked through Alaska.
Currently, Alaska has no credit card transfer partners and I don’t see that changing anytime soon, so I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to transfer points to Alaska while I could.
It’s possible/likely that Amex will drop Hawaiian as a transfer partner soon
While it hasn’t been confirmed, there have been rumors circulating that Amex will drop Hawaiian as a transfer partner as of June 30, 2025. Given that there’s a chance this opportunity to transfer Amex points to Alaska will disappear soon, I wanted to take advantage of it while I could.
I have plenty of Amex points, but wanted more Alaska miles
Before the transfer, I had ~730,000 Amex points and 41,000 Alaska miles (earlier in the day, I had 111,000 Alaska miles but used 70,000 Alaska miles for a one-way business class flight from LAX to LHR on American Airlines, which American was selling for 92,000 miles).
Since some of my favorite Alaska redemptions are 70,000 Alaska miles each way (e.g., Condor and American Airlines for one-way flights in business class between Los Angeles and Europe), having 140,000 Alaska miles in my account means that I could take advantage of a roundtrip European deal if one pops up.
What I didn’t love about transferring my Amex miles to Alaska
There are two things I didn’t love about this transfer, the first being that it’s speculative. It’s possible that I’ll hold onto these Alaska miles for years and Alaska will devalue their awards program, making it so that I get less value from the miles than if I had kept them as Amex points.
Second, Amex charges a fee to transfer miles to U.S.-based airlines, and I had to pay $60 for the transfer. This is actually the first time I’ve ever been charged a transfer fee, as I almost always transfer points to international airline programs or hotels (when I do transfer to a U.S. airline, it’s transferring Chase points to United, and Chase doesn’t charge a fee for those transfers).
Bottom line
While I’m generally against speculative transfer, I’m glad that I took advantage of being able to transfer Amex points to Alaska (via Hawaiian) while it’s still possible. Although Amex hasn’t said Hawaiian will be dropped as a transfer partner, it seems likely that this will happen in the next few months.
If you have a lot of Amex points and would like to add miles to your Alaska account, now is a great time to considering transferring some points.
