You Can Now Use AmEx Points to Bid on Flight Upgrades
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Let the bidding begin. American Express has announced a new plan — titled Upgrade With Points — that allows consumers to bid on seat flight upgrades using Membership Rewards.
If you're an AmEx Membership Rewards member (consumer, business or corporate), you can now use your points — or a combo of points and cash — to bid on seat upgrades from 18 different airlines. Upgrades are available for first, business or premium economy seats.
How it works
Here’s how the program works:
Log onto MembershipRewards.com.
Scroll through the partner airlines to find yours.
Enter your reservation information to make sure you're eligible for an upgrade.
If everything is a go, you'll see an option to use Membership Rewards points, or a points and cash combo, to bid on a seat upgrade.
Within five days of your flight, you'll receive notice from the airline indicating whether your offer was accepted or declined. AmEx will also send notice of the decision.
If your bid won, head to the corresponding airline's website to get a copy of your updated itinerary.
Should you need to change your reservation, don't worry about being locked into the seat upgrade. You can edit or cancel your bid at any time up until you receive notification from the airline. Again, this typically occurs within five days of your flight.
Is it a good deal?
If you really want that seat upgrade, you'll want to present a solid bid — but the higher you bid, the less of a return you'd be getting per point. While the criteria for accepting bids is completely up to the airline, AmEx says some things considered are the offer amount, number of bids and seat availability.
Given that it's pretty easy to redeem Membership Rewards for at least 1 cent of value per point, if you're not getting at least that much value from the upgrade, consider saving your points for something else.
A couple of final notes:
You can use the Upgrade with Points program even if you didn't use an American Express card to purchase the original ticket.
Upgrades aren't available on U.S.-based airlines at the moment.
How to maximize your rewards
You want a travel credit card that prioritizes what’s important to you. Here are our picks for the best travel credit cards of 2024, including those best for:
Flexibility, point transfers and a large bonus: Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card
No annual fee: Bank of America® Travel Rewards credit card
Flat-rate travel rewards: Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card
Bonus travel rewards and high-end perks: Chase Sapphire Reserve®
Luxury perks: The Platinum Card® from American Express
Business travelers: Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card
Planning a trip? Check out these articles for more inspiration and advice: How to earn and use AmEx Membership Rewards NerdWallet’s top travel credit cards 3 great cards that earn AmEx Membership Rewards