How to Actually Earn 5X Points with American Express Platinum Card on AmexTravel.com

American Express recently rolled out 5X points to all Platinum cards to all travel booked on AmexTravel.com.

I ran into trouble getting the 5X points trying to book my flights on AmexTravel so I wanted to share with you what I did to figure it out.

If you are logged into AmexTravel.com, you will not be able to pay with cash.

Here’s what I did:

• I logged into AmexTravel.com
• I filtered flights based on best departure/arrival times
• I sorted by lowest cost to highest

Then, when I narrowed down my ideal flight, my only option to pay was the “pay with points” via the Membership Rewards Insider Fares.

Insider Fares seem to be 77% of the normal cash cost of a flight, but the only way to unlock this cost savings is by using points.

This would be a great deal for any Platinum card holder if you wanted to pay with points, because you get 50% off points redemption.

But for me, I wanted to get 5X points instead, because I’m saving up my points for a big International trip a little later in the year.

So my solution was to log out of AmexTravel.com, sort, filter my flights, then get to the payment page, and then I logged in.

This then kept my ability to pay for the flight with cash, so I could earn my 5X points.

If you value Amex points at $.02 each, and I’m earning 5X points, that means for every dollar I spend, I get $.10 back.

So spend $1,000 on a flight, and get a $100 discount. Pretty nice discount 🙂