Right now, when you use Membership Rewards Pay with Points to pay for all or part of your flight, hotel, vacation or cruise booking on the American Express Travel site, you can get 20% of the points back as a credit to your Membership Rewards account.
Then American Express made a change and effective July 1, 2015, Business Platinum card members will no longer receive this 20% of Membership Rewards points back when booking a trip with American Express Travel Pay With Points.
Now American Express is throwing out another deal to Business Platinum card members. Beginning July 1, 2015, you can get 30% Membership Rewards points back when you use the Pay with Points feature for all or part of a flight with the airline you select. The selected airline will be “the qualifying airline” with respect to this new benefit and the $200 Airline Fee Credit.
How does this compare with the old benefit?
Well up until July 1, you can get 20% of your points back when you book with Pay With Points on ANY airline (as well as on other travel purchases). After July 1, you will now get 30% of your points back, when you book with Pay With Points on only ONE AIRLINE, the one you selected. So basically, card members are trading airline flexibility for a 10% increase in points back. If you tend to fly on one airline frequently, you may be in luck. But for the rest of us (like me), who shop for the best price and fly many airlines, not so much!
