American Express, Diners Club Change Reward Programs

American Express and Diners Club have changed their rewards programs. AmEx has clearly improved its already strong position by adding British Airways to its list of partner airlines. On the other hand, by devaluing its points, Diners seems to be headed in some other direction.

Effective later this year, AmEx users will be able to transfer their Membership Rewards points into miles of credit in British Airways' Executive Club frequent flyer program. British Airways joins several other airlines in accepting AmEx points into their programs:

• Aeromexico, Air Canada, AirTran, Alitalia, All Nippon Airways, Continental, Delta Air Lines, El Al, Air France/KLM, Frontier, Hawaiian Airlines, Iberia, JetBlue Airways, Mexicana, Singapore Airlines, Southwest, and Virgin Atlantic all convert AmEx points to credit you can combine with the credit you earn by flying. Most convert at the base rate of one mile per point; the few that don't use miles converted at comparable exchange rates. These airline credits can be applied to each line's entire spectrum of awards. The announcement didn't specify, but presumably British Airways will accept AmEx points at the usual rate of one mile per point.
• Partner lines Air Tahiti Nui, Cathay Pacific Airways, Qantas, South African Airways, and Swiss don't convert points to miles; instead, they offer a few limited awards for specified numbers of AmEx points. For the most part, those award mileages are reasonable, except for Air Tahiti Nui, where the AmEx point requirements are far higher than comparable credit levels on other lines.

Accumulating points in the AmEx Membership Rewards program has a big advantage over acquiring miles in individual airline programs: As long as you keep your card account active, your AmEx points never expire, and you can dump them into an airline account only when you need to use them. In fact, in recent years, Delta—for one—has run special promotions where you get more than 1 mile per point; you may or may not see that kind of offer in the future. Also, AmEx is working on an application that lets you search for available seats, transfer miles, and secure seats in a single online transaction. Unfortunately, although the idea sounds great, its current scope is extremely limited.

Press releases so far don't indicate whether British Airways will also join AmEx Platinum card's program of twofer tickets in premium classes, a deal with a somewhat different list of 20 partners than the mileage transfer program.

AmEx continues to offer the usual base secondary collision coverage for cars you rent using an AmEx card. However, for $24.95 extra per rental ($17.95 for California residents), you can convert the coverage to primary. Incidentally, that all-but-California price is up five dollars: a disappointment but still probably a good deal.

I can't say for sure what's going on at Diners, and the folks there declined to comment. What I can tell you is that Diners has devalued its points-to-miles program: you now need 1.2 Diners points for each mile in a partner line's program, a devaluation of about 17 percent. Diners' current list of partners—AirTran, American, British Airways, Delta, El Al, Eva Airways, Mexicana, SAS, and Thai—is not as robust as the AmEx list, although American, Eva, SAS, and Thai will be dealmakers for some travelers. Diners maintains its twofer premium travel program with British Airways (but no others), and it retains its universal primary collision coverage for rental cars with no supplementary payment.

To me, the big mystery is where Citicorp, owner of Diners in the United States, is heading with the card. At this point, Diners is accepting new applications only from current cardholders who want to change the type of card they have. The online lyrics seem to indicate that Citi is repositioning Diners as a niche card catering to business and "professional" accounts, as well as to avid golfers. Presumably, we'll find out when Citi decides to tell us. Meanwhile, it's hard to see how Diners, once a perennial "Freddie" winner as the best card for frequent flyers, won't lose ground to AmEx and co-branded bankcards. Stay tuned for future news.