Award Points
Award Points is home base for your points and miles. It does four things on one page: keeps a simple wallet of the balances you hold, surfaces the transfer bonuses running right now, shows where each card currency can transfer, and teaches — in plain English — how award travel actually works. It's the thinking half of the award toolkit; Award flights is the doing half. Find it under Travel → Award Points.
Every dollar figure on this page is an estimate range — "≈ $1,400–$1,500 toward travel", never a precise promise. What points are worth depends entirely on how you redeem them.
The two-hop idea
Everything on the page hangs off one mental model. Booking a flight with points is two separate moves:
- Bank points become airline miles. Card currencies like Amex Membership Rewards or Chase Ultimate Rewards transfer into an airline loyalty program — usually 1:1, usually instantly.
- The airline program books the seat. That program can book flights on its own planes and on its alliance and airline partners.
The airline flying the plane is often not the program you book through. Amex points can't move to United directly — but they transfer 1:1 to Aeroplan, LifeMiles, or KrisFlyer, and all three can book United-operated flights through the Star Alliance. That indirect path is normal; it's how most award bookings work.
The one rule to burn in: transfers are one-way. Once bank points become airline miles, they never come back. So you always find the award seat first, and transfer last — the page repeats this because it's the mistake that strands points.
Track your balances
The Your points section is a manual wallet. Click Add balance (top-right of the page, or in the section) and pick what you're adding:
- Card points — one of the five transferable bank currencies: Amex Membership Rewards, Chase Ultimate Rewards, Capital One Miles, Citi ThankYou Points, or Bilt Rewards.
- Airline miles — any of the 17 airline programs OrientME tracks, listed with their airline (e.g. Aeroplan — Air Canada).
- Other program — a free-text name for anything else, like World of Hyatt.
Enter the balance (copy it from the card or airline app), add an optional note (e.g. expires Dec 2027), and Save balance. Each saved balance becomes a card showing the number, a rough ≈ $low–$high toward travel estimate, and the date you last updated it. Hover a card for the pencil (edit the number and note in place) and trash (remove — this only deletes the tracked number, your actual points are untouched). Adding a currency you already track simply replaces its number.
Balances are manual by design — there's nothing to connect, and updating them takes about 30 seconds whenever they change. The payoff is that the rest of the page (and the Award tab) personalizes around what you actually hold.
See where each currency can go
Where your points can go is the centerpiece: a reach map for each card currency. Pick a currency from the chips at the top — currencies you hold are listed first with a Your points badge, and the one with your largest balance is selected by default.
For the selected currency you get one row per airline program it transfers into, best transfer rate first. Each row shows:
- The program and its airline (Aeroplan · Air Canada) with an alliance chip — Star Alliance, oneworld, SkyTeam, or Independent.
- The transfer ratio — most are 1:1; a worse rate like 1.25:1 is shown plainly.
- A transfer bonus badge when one is running (e.g. +30% until Jul 31).
- A transfer speed chip — instant, hours, or days. Speed matters when a scarce seat is on the line.
- If you hold that currency, a personalized line: Your 250,000 pts → up to 250,000 Aeroplan miles — bonus-adjusted when a promo is live.
Click a row to expand the program's cheat sheet: what its miles can book, its strengths, the Watch out gotcha, a Booking line telling you how that program actually tickets partner awards — which partners book on its website and which are phone-only — plus a concrete sweet-spot redemption and the typical value per mile. The booking line matters more than it looks: a seat that doesn't appear on an airline's website is often still bookable with a phone call (ANA through Virgin Atlantic is the classic example). And when a program looks promising, click Watch award space on its row — it takes you straight to the Award tab with that currency pre-selected, so the watch you create only shows seats your points can actually reach.
The section footer repeats the rule that protects you: Transfers are one-way — points can't come back. Find the award seat first, then transfer.
Catch a transfer bonus
Transfer bonuses — the second section on the page, right under your wallet — lists the time-boxed promos running right now, e.g. Amex → Flying Blue +25%, ends Jul 31. A bonus means a transfer lands with extra miles, which makes it the best possible moment to move points if you've already found the seat.
The list is ordered by what you can actually use. Bonuses on a currency you hold come first, outlined in the section's accent and carrying the Your points tag, with a line showing what your balance becomes during the promo. Promos on currencies you don't track still appear below them, tagged Not tracked, so you can see what a card would have been worth to you without mistaking it for something you can act on — each one offers the next step ("Add a Citi balance to see what this is worth to you"). The bonus percentage stays readable on every row either way; it's the number worth knowing.
A count beside the section heading — 2 live — tells you how many promos are running without your having to count rows.
A bonus closing within a week switches from a date to a countdown — Ends in 3 days, Ends tomorrow, Ends today — and is highlighted. Bigger bonuses still sort above closing ones: a +40% with three weeks left is a better move than a +5% closing tomorrow.
If none of your currencies has a promo running, the section says that too — "Nothing running on your Amex points right now." Silence would look like a broken page; this tells you there's genuinely nothing to act on.
Issuers run these several times a year, typically 20–40% extra — Amex most often, and Bilt's land on the 1st of each month and usually last a single day. When nothing at all is verified as live, the section says so; check back.
You don't have to remember to check. When a bonus is running on a currency you hold, it also shows up in Worth knowing on your Orient dashboard — "Citi → Flying Blue is +20% — ends in 17 days" — and tapping it brings you back here. Bonuses on cards you don't track never appear there, so the dashboard only ever tells you about promos you can use. Add your card currencies to the wallet above to switch this on.
Learn how award travel works
How award travel works is the five-step playbook, written for someone booking their first award: earn flexible points and keep them flexible, learn the two hops, find the seat before you do anything, compare programs for the same seat (the identical seat can cost wildly different miles — and taxes — depending on who books it), and transfer last, book immediately. A compact glossary underneath defines the vocabulary — award seat, transfer partner, transfer ratio, sweet spot, surcharges, and the rest — so the rest of the page never talks over your head.
Browse the program directory
The Program directory at the bottom covers all 17 airline programs OrientME tracks. Filter by alliance — All / Star Alliance / oneworld / SkyTeam / Independent — and each card gives you the program at a glance: which airlines its miles can book, the typical value per mile, and a Transfer from: row showing which cards reach it. A program no major card transfers into says so — No major card transfers — earn direct. Click More about this program for the full cheat sheet: strengths, the watch-out, how partner awards are booked (online vs by phone), and a sweet-spot example.
Pair it with the Award tab
Award Points and the Award tab are built to hand off to each other:
- Watch award space on any reach-map row opens the Award tab with that card currency ready to drop into a new watch's Pay with filter — so results are limited to programs your points reach.
- With balances saved, the Award tab's Book with your points panel gets personal: each card's chip shows the points cost for that exact seat and where you stand — ✓ you have 82k when your balance covers it, or you have 40k — 18k short when it doesn't.
- The Pay with picker in the Award tab lists your held currencies first, under Your cards.
- And the Award tab links back — Track your balances → Award Points sits in its info strip.
The loop, end to end: track balances here → spot where they transfer → watch award space in the Award tab → when a seat appears, transfer (ideally during a bonus) and book immediately.
On the go? Award Points ships on the mobile app too — the Travel tab has an Award Points card with the same wallet, reach map, bonuses, guide, and program directory, so you can update a balance or check a transfer path from anywhere.