American Express provides a lot of quirky/unusual transfer partners, and most of the time we rightly just look elsewhere for award redemptions. AeroMexico is a transfer partner of US American Express Membership Rewards and they’re currently running a transfer bonus of 20% through March 3, 2015.
The AeroMexico Club Premier program is actually measured in kilometers instead of the usual miles, so that makes it a tad bit more complicated. Normally for every 1,000 Amex Points you would receive 1,000 Club Premier Miles, which is equal to 1,600 Club Premier Kilometers. The 20% bonus is on top of that, so with this bonus you should receive a total of 1,920 AeroMexico Premier Kilometers (KmP).
So what is that actually worth? First let me remind you that AeroMexico is part of SkyTeam, which in my opinion is the weakest of the major airline alliances. The major carriers are Delta, Air France, Saudia, KLM, Alitalia, and Korean Air, but there are many others. Now let’s take a look at the award chart.
AeroMexico Club Premier SkyTeam Award Chart
Two important notes to remember as you review this chart: 1) the prices listed are for round trip awards (you can redeem one-way for half the price) and 2) awards are listed in Club Premier Kilometers. Again, with this transfer bonus, 1,000 Amex points is equal to 1,920 Club Premier Kilometers (KmP).
Breakdown of Award Prices
This chart is annoying to look at, so I broke down the award prices in an easier-to-read view below. I included how many Amex points are needed for the same award given the transfer bonus.
When you factor in the Amex transfer bonus, suddenly all the award prices become really cheap in comparison to other award programs that we use. There are excellent values all over this chart. The two most-used international awards:
- Round trip Business Class to Europe is only 67,000 Amex points. Current best value is Air Canada Aeroplan at 90,000.
- Round trip Business Class to Asia is only 75,000/80,000 Amex points. This blows away all other programs.
- Business Class to the Middle East is excellent value.
- Economy is excellent almost everywhere.
The only ones that aren’t considered excellent are Africa, South Pacific, and Southwest Asia. But even those destinations are competitive in Business Class compared to other programs like United, American/US, and Delta.
And when you look closely, the values are pretty excellent even without this 20% bonus. So why isn’t this program used more? A couple of reasons. First of all, I mentioned SkyTeam is the least valuable of the major airline alliances. It can be very difficult to find premium cabin award travel on many of these airlines. I would search the Air France website to find award availability for flights that you’re interested in. I would have said Delta, but they recently made their program so confusing that they deleted award charts, so you can’t see what’s low-level and what’s not.
The second reason is that they do charge fuel surcharges, so the cash portion can be expensive on many awards. That’s what scares most people away from award redemptions, similar to flying British Airways to/from London.
But how do you redeem AeroMexico Miles? You’ll have to do it the old fashioned way and call 800-247-3737.
Summary
AeroMexico offers tremendous value for award redemptions all over the world, and the best way to redeem AeroMexico Miles is in Business Class. With the current American Express transfer bonus of 20% the values become even better and is most definitely worth looking in to. Finding and booking these awards can be extremely difficult given that it’s SkyTeam, but when you find the right award you’ll be saving a ton of miles/points.
I must admit that have extremely limited experience booking awards with AeroMexico. Has anyone successfully booked awards with them in the past?
One other note: AeroMexico is great for hotel redemptions as well, but I’ll leave that for a different time.
Scott Mackenzie created Travel Codex to share his tricks for better travel.
