There are two different types of currencies used when you are booking award tickets: airline miles or credit card points. Some people fuse those two currencies into one concept when, in reality, they are very different. The basic difference is:
Miles are associated with a particular airline and generally cannot be transferred.
Points are transferrable currencies that credit card companies allow to be transferred to various airlines/hotels.
In an effort to entice you to use their credit cards, companies like Chase, American Express, Capital One, etc will offer transfer bonuses on a rotating basis. This means that when you move your points from your credit card to a given airline, more points end up in the mileage program than you moved from the credit card. For example, American Express offered these transfer bonuses recently (the bonuses to British Airways, Aer Lingus, and Iberia Plus run until September 30, 2024).
This means if you wanted to purchase a flight like this one, instead of transferring 95k American Express points into your British Airways Avios account, you’d only transfer 74k, which would turn into 96.2k, allowing you to purchase the flight for fewer points than if you only had British Airways Avios in the first place.
While not the best deal in the world (you can purchase the same flight for 63k Cathay Pacific miles, also a transfer partner of American Express), it does make situations like this more palatable.
Make sure to keep track of what transfer bonuses you have access to and, if possible, sign up for credit cards from multiple banks in order to diversify your portfolio of points.
