Mega Deal: Turning 38.5k American Express Membership Rewards Points into a $7,295 Value!

From now until 11/30/17 you can transfer Amex Membership Reward Points to Virgin Atlantic with a 30% bonus.

This makes traveling to Europe a great deal.

Only Amex cards that earn Membership Rewards that are transferable to partners will work.

Delta and Virgin Atlantic have a code sharing partnership. This means that you can book delta flights on Virgin Atlantic’s website.

Here is where the Mega Deal comes in. Delta Business Class from the US to Europe starts at 50,000 Virgin Atlantic Flying Club Miles and $5.60 in taxes. Yes, the cash part is quite a bit of change.

While 50,000 miles is a pretty decent deal within itself. It is an incredible deal for 38,500 points. That’s 38,500 Amex Points pre-transfer. You will actually have to transfer in 1,000 point increments. So, you would need to transfer 39,000 points, which would give you 50,700 Virgin Atlantic Flying Club Miles.

I pulled an example for you. I selected a route from JFK to Amsterdam. Selecting the “Upper Class” option under “Advanced Options”

For some reason, the website won’t let you click the “use miles” option for some routes. But here is the work around:

I figured out if you change destination airport to LHR, the “Use Miles” option becomes available. This is fine if you want to actually fly to London. The downside is that a fuel surcharge gets tact on and instead of $5.60, you are paying $501.60. Yikes! So instead, lets change the destination to Amsterdam (AMS) when revising the flight details.

You will see that changing the destination city, that the “Use Miles” option is still selected while also being grayed out. DON’T Touch it. I know you want to…Don’t.

Once you hit submit you will see availability for miles.

In the example, we found a flight on Jan 25 for a Delta Flight Business Class for 50,000 miles and $5.60.

The listed cash price for the same flight is…$7,301

That is a crazy $0.19 per Amex point! One of the best redemptions I have ever seen.

Math: ($7,301 - $5.60) / 38,500 = .189 aka $0.19

We give this a Mega Deal a 5 out of 5 martini glasses.

Now go on and book that flight (or similar) so you can enjoy your 5 glasses on Delta Business Class to Europe!