American Express limits Delta SkyMiles transfers to 250,000 per year

Starting January 1, 2015 American Express Membership Rewards will begin capping transfers to Delta Skymiles at 250,000 miles per calendar year. This means in a single calendar year, no more than 250,000 Membership Rewards points can be transferred into any number of Delta Skymiles accounts.

Amex caps Skymiles transfers to 250,000
Amex caps Skymiles transfers to 250,000

With the difficulty of finding reasonable award space with Delta, this new limit isn’t really a huge blow. However, if you find yourself in need of more than 250,000 Skymiles per year, simply get a spouse or family member involved in earning Membership Rewards and you can double your transfer power. Or pick up one of the many Delta Skymiles credit cards to top off your mileage balance if necessary.

If you’re earning more than 250,000 Membership Rewards, there are still at least half a dozen decent transfer partners you can unload your extra points with:

  • Aeroplan
  • British Airways
  • Frontier Airlines
  • Hawaiian Airlines
  • Virgin America
  • Virgin Atlantic
  • Jet Blue

The bottom line is, this isn’t a huge blow since we can still earn Skymiles in other ways and have some options to unload excess Membership Rewards points. It’s still worth noting so that those who do need additional Skymiles can make alternate plans for earning them.

HT: One Mile at at Time

[jetpack_subscription_form title=”Subscribe via email for more points, miles and free travel”]

5 responses to “American Express limits Delta SkyMiles transfers to 250,000 per year”

  1. Samir Avatar

    Hi Ariana,
    Please consider including the full content of your posts in your RSS feeds, instead of just a snippet. This will increase your readership, particularly those readers who exclusively peruse blogs through feed readers.

    Thank you for the consideration.

    1. Ariana Avatar

      Thanks for the tip Samir. I’ve made the change so the full content should appear going forward.

  2. bmau09 Avatar
    bmau09

    My roommate’s dad has a ton of Membership Rewards points. Let’s say he wants to transfer more than 250,000 points per year from his own Membership Rewards account to Skymiles. Will it be possible to transfer Membership Rewards points from his own account to the Skymiles accounts of his family and friends?

    1. Ariana Avatar

      Unfortunately you can only transfer out 250k per year, no matter how many different accounts you’re transferring to.

  3. mike ahuja Avatar

    This would be something my mom my want to know, me on the other hand….i dont know how i would ever obtain that many airline miles :'(

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *