Correction: Membership Rewards-HawaiianMiles-Mileage Plan transfers are instant, when they work

Last week I wrote about Alaska Airlines’ announcement that miles could now be transferred back and forth between Mileage Plan and Hawaiian Airlines HawaiianMiles.

I wrote, “it takes a few days to complete the cycle of moving Membership Rewards points to HawaiianMiles and then moving them to Mileage Plan.”

This turns out not to be true. Instead, last week there seems to have been an outage in the connection between American Express Membership Rewards and HawaiianMiles, and transfers were completely failing.

In fact, I noticed at the time I submitted my transfer that my Membership Rewards balance didn’t reflect the trial transfer I initiated, and I didn’t receive a confirmation e-mail. Since it was my first transfer, I assumed that was just how the system worked.

When I submitted an identical transfer a few days later, the miles appeared immediately in my HawaiianMiles account (and I received a confirmation e-mail from American Express). I was then able to instantly transfer the miles to Mileage Plan through their dedicated Points.com portal.

Instant transfers mean there’s less need to speculatively transfer Membership Rewards points to Alaska, and makes it more marginally attractive to wait for another transfer bonus to HawaiianMiles.