Whether you're a seasoned traveler, an aspiring globetrotter, or completely new to the points game, the allure of cheap travel is undeniable. But in today's world of seemingly soaring airfares, achieving that dream can feel harder than ever.

Let's face it, airline tickets often eat a significant chunk out of any travel budget. Luckily, airline miles and credit card points go a long way for booking travel and can often let travelers book free flights to worldwide destinations. And, for those looking to travel within or from the USA, United Airlines is well known as one of the easiest airlines for using points/airline miles.

However, the biggest issue with United is that they only have two formal credit card transfer partners: Chase Bank and Bilt Rewards. Transferring your points from these two credit providers is easy—you enter your United MileagePlus number, send your points, and book your flights. But for those hoping to use other credit card reward systems to book their flights, such as from American Express or Capital One, there is no way to transfer your American Express points to United directly.

But for those in the latter category, don’t fret, as there is a relatively unknown strategy to leverage your American Express Membership Reward points or Capital One Miles for your United flights:

By using the alliance member programs!

United is a member of the biggest airline alliance, the Star Alliance, which consists of global airlines covering destinations all over the world. If you’re unfamiliar with the concept of an airline alliance, at its simplest, it is a group of airlines that allow for code-sharing and the cross-booking of flights. Not only do these airline alliances often allow you to book flights on any of the alliance airlines through your main operating airline (e.g., United), but they also allow you can to get extra status-based benefits across airlines!

Now, we’ve established that American Express Membership Rewards points can’t be transferred directly to United, but that there is a method for booking most United flights (and particularly international United flights) with your AmEx points.

Instead of trying to transfer your Membership Reward points to United, you instead transfer directly to one of the other members of the Star Alliance and then book your flight on that marketing airline! While there’s an extra step involved compared to booking directly, this strategy allows you to book your United flights with your American Express points.

See below for the full list of airlines included in the Star Alliance that have the potential to allow you to book United flights.

Among these airlines, Air Canada, ANA, Avianca, and Singapore Airlines all allow you to transfer your American Express points directly at a 1:1 ratio.

An Example Booking

Let’s look at an example of using American Express points to book a United flight:

For instance, say we wanted to use our American Express points to book a one-way ticket on United Airlines flight UA110 from Newark (EWR) to London Heathrow (LHR) departing at 6 pm and arriving at 6:20 am. When booking through United, this flight would cost $477 for a regular economy ticket or ~33,000 United Miles (see below for pricing details).

If you have enough United MileagePlus Miles, you can book the flight directly through United’s website. As we also mentioned, Chase Bank is a direct transfer partner of United Airlines; if you want to book this flight with United Miles through your Chase Ultimate Rewards Points, all you need to do is transfer your points directly to United and book the flight the same way. However, to book this flight with American Express, we need to make use of a transfer partner that is also part of the Star Alliance.

Related: The Full Chase Bank Credit Card Tier List

For this EWR-LHR United flight example, we will use Air Canada’s Aeroplan rewards program. While there are several different options from the Star Alliance that we could use for this booking, we’re going with Aeroplan as it’s generally one of the easiest platforms to use—certain international transfer partners have outdated websites that make booking your flights frustratingly difficult, and so we generally recommend checking Aeroplan first.

To book this particular flight, we’re going to begin by searching on the Air Canada website for the same route and date as our original United flight. In our example, when we search for EWR-LHR on the same date as our target flight, we see a wide variety of flight options, including our target flight (see below) operated by United Airlines. You’ll know which options are operated by United as it will both show the United logo on the flight path and will state United Airlines as the operating airline on the bottom left of the route.

If you can identify the offering that matches the initial United flight, you will also now find out how much the flight will cost to book in Air Canada points/miles and cash. For this example, the flight is going to cost 35,000 Aeroplan Miles (and therefore 35,000 American Express points) plus $76 CAD. This flight is only slightly more expensive on Aeroplan than on United, and therefore represents a good opportunity for using this approach.

From here, all you have to do is transfer the points from your American Express account directly to your Air Canada Aeroplan Rewards account. If you’re unfamiliar with how to transfer your American Express points, make sure to check out our guide for how to transfer AmEx points to any airline. While this process is largely straightforward, transferring points can be confusing for those who are unfamiliar with the steps.

Once your points are transferred, you can book the flight on Air Canada with points as normal!

Important tips: Always double-check that the route you are hoping to book has seat availability before you transfer any points (we suggest calling for any flights costing over ~50k points). Transferring points only works in one direction—once you transfer your American Express points away, you can never get them back into your AmEx account. As well, be on the lookout for “phantom award space”, which is when a flight appears to be able to be booked with points, but then fails to give you a ticket when you try to make the booking. While phantom award space is exceedingly rare, it is always worth confirming the availability to avoid having hundreds of thousands of points potentially get stuck with an airline you aren’t going to be able to fly in the future!

Summary

Using your American Express Membership Rewards points to book United flights is a great way to maximize your rewards across different ecosystems. Luckily for travelers, this strategy also applies to other airlines, with several shared transfer partners between Chase Bank/American Express and Chase Bank/Capital One. Using your points together across these ecosystems can help further the value you can get out of your rewards and travel, resulting in you being able to go further and fly more luxuriously.

We hope this article helped you book your next United flight with American Express points! If you’re interested in similar topics, make sure to check out our guides to transferring credit card points to American Airlines, transferring American Express points to airline partners, and booking Hyatt hotels with Chase UR points.

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