Analyzing Amex Membership Rewards Star Alliance Partners: Should You Transfer to Aeroplan, ANA or Singapore?

The beauty of the American Express Membership Rewards program is having the ability to transfer points to valuable airline partners so you can snag the exact award you want, when you want it. All three alliances have transfer partners and in this post I’ll shed some light on the three Star Alliance transfer partners: Air Canada Aeroplan, All Nippon Airways Mileage Club and Singapore Airlines Krisflyer. Aeroplan transfers occur almost instantly, but transfers to Krisflyer and Mileage Club take about 48 hours. Still, with some simple planning you can maximize the value of each Amex point transferred and at the same time minimize the out of pocket cost of taxes and fees when choosing the best partner for your route.

Air Canada’s Aeroplan Rewards program is instituting some major changes to its program starting January 1, 2014, including a big overhaul (read: devaluation) of many redemptions. Business and first class awards to almost every continent are increasing 20% by 25,000-40,000 miles on top of the increase in award redemption levels that Air Canada put in place in 2011.

With that in mind, I thought it would be a good moment to compare the miles and taxes/fees breakdowns on various awards both in terms of Aeroplan’s current redemption levels and future levels, as well as posting them side-by-side with redemption options from ANA and Krisflyer, so that readers can plan their upcoming travel accordingly.

To help you at least do preliminary research and get a feeling for how many miles and how much cash you’ll be spending on certain awards, I chose four international routes and calculated out the miles as well as taxes and fees you would need using each program for a side-by-side comparison in Economy, Business and First Class. This is by no means a comprehensive study and I recommend you calling the transfer partner and checking availability and taxes/fees before transferring any Membership Rewards points.

The routes I chose were:
Los Angeles (LAX) – Sydney (SYD) on United
Chicago (ORD) – Frankfurt (FRA) on Lufthansa
Houston (IAH) – Lagos (LOS) on United
Washington-Dulles (IAD) – Tokyo (NRT) on ANA
Johannesburg (JNB) – Washington (IAD) on South African Airways

Here are the results. Bolded is my favorite choice for each route.

The real winner here is ANA thanks to its distance-based redemptions and a mostly decent taxes/fees schedule (though there are some routes like those to Europe and Japan where these fees get quite high). However, I’d rather pay an additional $900 in fees to save 62,000 American Express Membership Rewards points, because that is like “paying” just shy of 1.5 cents for each point, which I’d personally do. However, if your goal is to minimize out of pocket spend, then you may want to avoid ANA and instead go for Singapore in certain circumstances (like Lufthansa Business/First to Europe). Another reminder: this was a just snapshot of sample itineraries from the US – there are many other itineraries/routes that may make more sense to use another partner, so always double check your options when booking.

ANA also has one of the best Star Alliance search engines, pulling in nearly every single partner in their online search and allowing you to book multiple segments on different partners. Check out this post on using the ANA search tool. Click here to sign-up for a Mileage Club account.

ANA is far from a perfect program – they require you to have a some sort of relationship for everyone you redeem miles for (though I hear this is rarely enforced) and they do not allow changes to an award once it has begun. I recommend reviewing the program/award rules here and their refund policy here.

I did an entire series on ANA Award Taxes and Fees analyzing the costs of award with each partner. In Part 1 I priced out itineraries on Air Canada, ANA, Lufthansa, Singapore, SWISS, Thai Airways, Turkish Airlines, United and US Airways. In Part 2, I looked at Adria, Aegean, Air China, Air New Zealand, Asiana, Austria, Avianca, Brussels Airlines, Copa and Virgin Atlantic. In Part 3, I found the taxes and surcharges on partners: Croatia Airlines, EgyptAir, Ethiopian Airlines, LOT Polish Airlines, SAS, Shenzhen, South African Airways, TAM and TAP. In Part 4, I found the taxes and surcharges for itineraries on ANA’s non-Star Alliance partners (I found Virgin Atlantic in Part 2 since it’s a popular carrier) including: Air Macau, Etihad, EVA (intra-Asian only), Hawaiian Airlines (inter-island only), Jet Airways and Qatar Airways. In the final post, I included a roundup of all the awards I’d found including taxes and fees for side-by-side comparison.

I also wrote a series on pre-devaluation (good until the end of 2013) Aeroplan Award Taxes and Fees.  In Part 1 of my series, I priced out awards on Air Canada, United, Lufthansa, Brussels Air, Singapore Airlines, Air New Zealand, ANA and South African Airways. In Part 2, I looked at some other popular Star Alliance carriers including: Air China, Asiana, EgyptAir, LOT Polish Airlines, SAS, Swiss, TAM, Thai Airways, Turkish Airlines and US Airways (for now). In Part 3, I examined the rest of the 27 Star Alliance partners including: Adria Airways, Aegean, Austrian, Avianca/Taca, Copa Croatia, Shenzhen and TAP, and the final installment: Aeroplan Star Alliance Taxes and Fees Overview Roundup.