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.
What are the fees for award cancellation and re-deposit for AeroMexico club premier awards?
How much in fuel surcharges for a simple US to Europe in business class?
AM has very insignificant YQ, about a buck on something, but taxes out of MEX are pretty high. Good job on the chart. This transfer looks tempting if you can actually find an award.
Good find bud. I’m gonna have to look into this a bit more.
Great find! Love the originality.
To assess whether this is a good solution for me, I’d want to be able to gauge award availability and surcharges online ahead of time. Maybe you can help me understand that better?
Let’s take an example scenario. Say BOS – CDG on June 27th, AF 333 departing at 8:45pm. If I check Air France’s site I do see award availiability, but if I check Delta’s website I do *not* award availability at the lowest levels. Which makes me think AeroMexico wouldn’t have it either. Does Air France not release Business Class award space to any partners?
Then, looking at surcharges Air France’s site prices the award at 65,000 miles plus $227.43. However if I look at ITA Matrix they say the YR is $428. Would the fuel surcharges be more like $227 or $428?
Not that I actually want to book this award, but I’d find it helpful to understand this better to get a better handle on these aspects of award redemption in this alliance.
I called Aeroplan about the scenario I mentioned above. And it’s what I feared which is basically the worst of all worlds: The award availability is roughly what you see on Delta.com and the fuel surcharges are what you see on ITA Matrix.
Their awards desk is only open weekdays. The first time I called, the rep said I could check award availability online. So I signed up for a free Club Premier account. However when I tried to check space it said since I’m in the US I have to call in.
The second time I called, the rep looked up availability and fuel surcharges for me. The date I asked her to search showed lowest level availablity on Air France’s website. However she didn’t see any space on that date. Makes sense that they, like a lot of carriers, show different space for partners than when using their own miles. My point is it’s not a good idea to check awards space on the partner airline whose metal you’re flying. Better to check Delta.com or some other SkyTeam carrier if there’s a better one for these sorts of things.
When she found award space on Air France metal and tried to price it, she was unable to secure the booking from Air France. Makes me think no Business Class awards are available using AeroMexico miles on Air France metal.
She found a direct flight on Delta metal on another date. One-way BOS-CDG priced out at 40,000 AeroMexico “miles” (64,000 kilometers like you say) plus $455.80 in surcharges plus a $30 booking fee. Using Air France miles it’s 65,000 plus $227.43 according to Air France’s website.
I’m surprised they evidently charge such huge fuel surcharges when flying Delta metal.
So does it make sense to pursue this scheme for flights to Europe? Seems like a bad use of MRs:
AmEx MRs to AeroMexico: 33,500 MRs + $485 (considering a 20% transfer bonus at the moment, bad award availability)
AmEx MRs to Delta: 62,500 MRs + $5 (bad award availability)
AmEx MRs to AirFrance: 62,500 MRs + $227 (better award availability)
I see a similar scenario when wanting to fly to Europe on Lufthansa or SWISS using various instruments: Using Lufthansa miles and paying the fuel surcharges can make sense if it costs fewer miles and gets you better award award availability. Even if it costs ~$400 per person one-way in Business or First. And it makes sense to transfer to Aeroplan especially if you can fly on SWISS because they don’t charge fuel surcharges.
But transferring MRs to Aeroplan to fly to Europe feels most similar to trasnferring MRs to Aeroplan to fly to Europe on Lufthansa: It doesn’t cost many miles but you have poor award availability and high fuel surcharges.
So unless there are some partners that don’t charge fuel surcharges AND you can find award availability on dates that suit you this approach is of limited use for flying to Europe using MRs.
Great research! Given all the questions I plan to do a follow-up post with more details of the program.
Great post to fill in some of the gaps on availability and cost–thank you.
Can you explain the hotel comment?!
Like many other mileage programs, you can redeem AeroMexico miles for hotel stays. There’s generally pretty good value to be had here so it’s something worth looking into if you’re short on hotel points.
I don’t care how “awesome” AM’s schedule looks. I won’t ever give them a bit of business until they mail me the free ticket they robed from me almost 15 years ago. Years ago I was a young fella new to the miles game and ended up flying a “DL” flight that was codeshared with AM. On the flight I got free booze and a much better level of service than I had received flying with DL, so in an attempt to flee SkyPesos, I got a Club Premier account. I was doing a fairly good bit of transcon flying on DL on full-fare tickets with work and I credited all of my DL activity on Club Premier account. I got within a handful of miles all earned from flying towards my goal and was had begun to make my travel plans when all of a sudden, about half of my Club Premier miles (seems like back then they did call them miles, but I digress…) disappeared from my account. I called Club Premier and asked what happened. They informed me that the miles had expired since I hadn’t flown an AM operated flight. Flying any other SkyTeam member was irrelevant. Of course I wasn’t flying as much with work then and I was both naïve and relatively broke. My free ticket to Cancun vanished, thanks to AM. Once burnt, twice learnt!
75k rt biz to asia seems like a killer deal, especially on the new CI. Can’t seem to find any writeups or experiences actually booking AM award though…