I woke up this morning to a dozen articles on a new “Amex Offer” in which you can get 20,000 American Express Membership Rewards points for spending at least $1,000 on Air France.
So in case you missed it on other places, I’ll repeat it here — this is a compelling targeted offer from AMEX in which you can earn 20,000 Membership Rewards points in addition to whatever additional points you would earn on the ticket by spending $1,000. That’s too good to pass up.
The fine print states that Flying Blue mileage purchases or transfers do not count, but does not exclude Flying Blue taxes booked via airfrance.us. Telephone bookings are excluded, so the award must be relatively straightforward to be booked online.
My Plan
My brother and I plan to spend a few days together in the Middle East this spring. We need a one-way ticket back to the USA. While paid business tickets from Abu Dhabi or Dubai are not all that competitive, if we hop on a 3hr flight to Colombo, premium fares drop dramatically.
We are eying something like this–
Assuming we can book this through Air France and the Etihad flight would credit, we would earn a 125% bonus on miles flown so that comes to 11,152 miles. Add the 20,000 to it and I am getting home from Asia to the USA in business class for $1342 with over 31,000 miles as well.
But there are always tradeoffs. Like this long-awaited flight–
Oh well, we’ll see. In any case, this is an exceptional deal that you consider taking advantage of whether you travel in coach, business, or first. Remember, your AMEX Plat also gets you 5 points per dollar on travel spending.
i hope you use two different cards as you can do $1000 on each card to get the bonus twice:)
Of course! 🙂
I have the Air France 20K MR points offer on my credit cards, but not the Plat charge card. My situation is not too unique, but I rarely use the Plat charge except as needed for benefits.
Hi Matthew,
Can you book this trip on airfrance.us ? I thought departure city must be in US.
Hello Matthew, two questions from a newbie:
“Assuming we can book this through Air France and the Etihad flight would credit..”
Can you explain what exactly you mean by Etihad would credit…
“you can do $1000 on each card to get the bonus twice:)..”
Can you explain how one pay a ticket online with two card on airfrance.us??
I need two tickets, so that comment was suggesting I use one card for each ticket. Unfortunately, one ticket cannot be paid with two cards.
Etihad is not a SkyTeam partner, therefore I wondered whether I would receive credit for that flight. It is not even listed as a Flying Blue partner:
https://www.flyingblue.com/partners/airlines.html