NOTE AS OF 12/12/15–DELTA HAS INDICATED THAT THIS CHANGE IS NOT GOING TO TAKE EFFECT!!
Beginning January 1, 2015, Delta is making a program-wide change limiting the number of points that can be transferred into a SkyMiles account from American Express Membership Rewards. (Delta is a transfer partner).
As a result of this change,
- the maximum number of Membership Rewards® points you will be able to transfer out of a single Membership Rewards account to one or more SkyMiles accounts will be limited to 250,000 points per calendar year.
- Additionally, the maximum number of Membership Rewards points you will be able to transfer into a single SkyMiles account will also be limited to 250,000 points per calendar year.
You are still able to transfer Membership Rewards points to a Delta SkyMiles account without any annual limitations through December 31, 2014. That is, through December 31, 2014, you may transfer a maximum of 999,000 points to a single SkyMiles account on any given day.
So, how does this affect me or any other big family out there? Well assume I have set my sights on a big trip to Europe for the future. (One day I want us to travel as a family to France, Italy, I can go on….) We are a family of 5. If I want to redeem Delta SkyMiles for free flights, and I need to transfer them from American Express, I better hope those tickets are only 50,000 Delta SkyMiles each or less. HIGHLY UNLIKELY!
Remember how I accumulated all of those American Express Membership Rewards points to redeem them for our free flights to Israel. The way that I was able to get those free flights was by transferring 425,000 Membership Rewards points to Matmid, El Al’s frequent flier program.
So look at that, I actually did make a very big Membership Rewards Transfer. Who knows, I may want to do it again. Unfortunately, due to these changes, it will likely not be able to be to Delta. 🙁
