One more great use of Amex Membership Rewards

After reading my last post on my favorite uses of Amex Membership Rewards points, a reader commented that they thought I had missed one: ANA. I'll be honest, I've never used ANA as a transfer partner, or as a mileage program in general. So I did a little digging, and it turns out that ANA's rewards program is a hidden gem.

ANA

ANA is in the Star Alliance, meaning it has a partnership with both United and US Airways. ANA miles can be used on both of these airlines. Like British Airways, ANA has a distance-based award chart. But unlike British Airways, ANA doesn't charge you per leg, it charges you for your total roundtrip distance. Take a look:

This makes for some pretty darn cheap awards. For instance, instead of paying 25,000 miles to fly to Chicago on United, I could pay 20,000. Plus ANA doesn't charge last-minute award fees, so not only am I spending fewer miles, I'm also saving myself $75 if I want to fly in less than 21 days.

Take a look at some of these other pricing levels. DC to London is 7100 miles roundtrip. That means 43,000 miles in Economy, or 68,000 in Business. Compare that to 60,000 in Economy with United or US Airways miles. Incredible. 

One slight problem

ANA has a website that can be difficult to use. While it does have the most complete Star Alliance inventory of any website, including United's, it's hard to access this inventory without miles in your account already. You'll probably want to search for awards before you actually transfer your miles to ANA, so fortunately there is a workaround, which MileValue has laid out in great detail here.