The Amex to Avios transfer bonus is live at 30% through September 27, 2026, and the airlines listed in your app are not the only ones where the value lives.
Open the Amex app, tap redeem rewards, then transfer points, and you will see the offer badge on British Airways, Iberia Plus, and Aer Lingus AerClub. Every one of them moves at 1,000 Membership Rewards points to 1,300 Avios instead of the usual 1,000 to 1,000.
That much is public. What most people will never do is take the extra click after the transfer lands.
Why This Is Really One Bonus With Six Doors
Avios is a shared currency. British Airways, Iberia, Aer Lingus, Finnair, Qatar Airways, Vueling, and Loganair all run on it, and you can move Avios between linked accounts at 1:1 for free. That means the bonus is not really three separate offers. It is one bonus with a handful of exit doors, and two of those doors lead to programs that are not part of the promotion at all.
Qatar Airways Privilege Club is an Amex transfer partner, but it is not included in this bonus. Transfer directly and you get 1,000 Avios for 1,000 points. Finnair Plus is not an Amex Membership Rewards partner in the United States at all, so there is no direct route to it.
Route the points through British Airways first, then move the Avios sideways, and you land in either program having paid the discounted rate. Same destination, roughly 23% fewer Membership Rewards points.
Hidden Airline One: Qatar Qsuite For About 54,000 Points
Qatar’s Qsuite is the one people build entire trips around, and the award pricing is already aggressive before any bonus. Saver rates for nonstop US/CAD to Doha in Qsuite are priced at 70,000 Avios one way.
Here is the math. Transfer Amex points straight to Qatar Privilege Club and you pay 70,000 Membership Rewards points, because there is no bonus on that partner. Transfer to British Airways during the bonus instead and 70,000 Avios costs you 53,847 Membership Rewards points, since 70,000 divided by 1.3 comes to 53,846.15. Amex moves points in 1,000-point increments, so in practice you transfer 54,000 points and receive 70,200 Avios. Then you link your Qatar account to British Airways and move the Avios across.
The difference is 16,000 points for one extra click. On a round trip, that is roughly 32,000 points back in your account.
Qatar prices its own flights variably by date and route, so 70,000 is what this specific seat showed and not a guaranteed rate. Price the exact flight you want before you transfer anything.
Hidden Airline Two: Finnair Business Class To Scandinavia
Finnair Plus prices its own long-haul flights on a zone chart, and Chicago to Helsinki in business sits at 62,500 Avios plus about $147 in taxes and fees. Divide 62,500 by 1.3 and you are at 48,077 Membership Rewards points for a lie-flat seat to Northern Europe.
Because Finnair is not an Amex partner, there is no version of this where you transfer direct.
One requirement to plan around: your Finnair Plus account has to be at least 30 days old before you can link it to British Airways and move Avios, and the names on both accounts have to match. If you do not have a Finnair Plus account yet, open it today so the clock starts running well ahead of the September 27 deadline.
The American Airlines Angle Through Finnair
Finnair and American are Oneworld partners, and Finnair publishes a fixed award chart for American-operated flights. Business class within the continental United States and Canada sits at 27,000 Avios, which comes out to 20,769 Membership Rewards points after the bonus. Economy on the same routes runs 16,500 Avios, or 12,693 points.
Two caveats that matter more than the rates. American awards cannot be booked on the Finnair website and have to be booked by calling Finnair customer service or using their chat function, which adds friction and means you should confirm availability before you move any Avios. And Finnair raised its partner award prices twice in early 2026 without advance notice, so treat the chart above as a snapshot rather than a promise.
The Qatar Restriction That Can Ruin This
In June 2026, Qatar Privilege Club limited who members can book award flights for. Redemptions are now restricted to people you have registered in advance through either the My List feature, which holds up to four other Privilege Club members, or Family and Friends, which holds up to six people without Privilege Club accounts. To use either feature, your account has to be at least 30 days old and you must have collected Avios through actual qualifying activity, meaning a flight credited to Privilege Club or spend on a Qatar co-branded card. Points transferred in from Amex do not satisfy that requirement.
Booking for yourself is unaffected. Nothing changes there.
Booking Qsuite for a partner, a parent, or a friend is where people are getting stuck, and reports of travelers transferring large balances only to find they cannot ticket the second passenger are not hypothetical. If that is your situation, the workaround is to book the Qatar-operated flight through British Airways Club instead, which has no equivalent restriction on who you can book for. Verify the Avios price and the surcharges on both sides before you commit, because they are not always identical.
The Fine Print Worth Reading Twice
Transfers move in 1,000-point increments and are generally instant to all three bonused programs. The 30% is built into the transfer ratio rather than applied as a separate credit, so you can use it as many times as you like before the deadline.
Only Membership Rewards-earning cards work.
Every transfer is one way. There is no path back to Membership Rewards once the points leave, which is why speculative transferring is a bad idea even at 30%. Find the seat first, confirm it is bookable, then move the points.
The offer is scheduled to end September 27, 2026. Amex bonuses typically expire late on the final day rather than at midnight local, but the exact cutoff time is not something I could confirm from the offer page, so do not plan around the last few hours.
Who Should Skip This
Skip it if you do not have a specific award in mind. A 30% bonus on points you cannot use is a 100% loss, and Avios balances sitting idle across five different programs is how people end up with orphaned points.
Skip it if your main travel is domestic economy on airlines outside Oneworld. Avios does nothing for you on Delta, United, Southwest, or JetBlue outside of Qatar’s narrow JetBlue partnership (which, to be fair, has come in handy for me before so worth checking regardless!).
Skip the Qatar leg specifically if you need to book for someone who is not registered on your Privilege Club lists and you have no qualifying flight activity. Route through British Airways instead or wait until you have satisfied Qatar’s requirement.
And skip it if you are transferring purely because the number is big. Bonuses on this pair of programs come around regularly. Missing this one is not the last chance at anything.
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