Japanese carrier All Nippon Airways has a solid loyalty program, and if you earn American Express Memberships Rewards, you can easily leverage them because ANA is a transfer partner.

ANA has a generous partner award chart with sweet spots that you can use to fly some of its Star Alliance partner airlines. We’re talking round-trip business class award tickets (with a free stopover if you’re feeling adventurous) between the U.S. and Europe for only 88,000 miles.

Despite these advantages, ANA doesn’t get enough attention. Here’s why you should consider transferring your AmEx Membership Rewards to ANA the next time you book a flight.

Reasons to transfer to ANA

ANA has insanely valuable miles

After a deep dive valuations analysis, NerdWallet determined that the typical value of ANA miles for economy awards is 2.8 cents each, but the value can almost triple in some cases when redeemed for business class.

This mile value plays out in some of the sweet spots we found, where it would cost thousands of more miles if you booked the same flight with another airline loyalty program.

Also, if you were to use your AmEx Membership Rewards to book travel through the AmEx portal, you’ll get only about 0.7 cent to 1 cent of value. That means that you can get, on average, 7x more value if you transfer those points to ANA and then use them to book business class award tickets.

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BROWSE CARDS

ANA has generous round-trip, stopover and open jaw rules

You might be able to add extra destinations to your trip by leveraging ANA’s open jaw and stopover rules. These rules allow you to add an extra flight between two cities or simply depart from a different city than the one you flew to originally.

The best part is that it won’t cost you any more miles than a mere round-trip ticket — so long as you remain in the ANA's designated zone. Here's how it works.

The ANA Star Alliance and partner award zones

Below are ANA’s designated zones, which you need to refer to when looking up award prices for one of the Star Alliance member airlines or ANA’s other partner airlines. The number of miles required depends on which zone you’re flying from and flying to.

Booking a round-trip ANA partner award

Let’s consider the example of a round-trip flight from New York (Zone 6) to Amsterdam (Zone 7) in business class for 88,000 miles.

You could turn this same itinerary into an open jaw flight or add a stopover, and the number of miles needed would remain the same. Here’s how.

Booking an open jaw partner award via ANA

Remember: The only caveat to book an open jaw partner award is that the departure airport of the return flight must be within the same zone that you arrived in.

You can use those same 88,000 miles to fly from New York (Zone 6) to Amsterdam (Zone 7) and then return back from Lisbon (Zone 7) to Washington, D.C. (Zone 6).

Since there are plenty of low cost carriers in Europe you can fly to get from Amsterdam to Lisbon, this generous routing rule allows you to visit two great cities.

Booking an open jaw plus stopover ANA partner award

To maximize this 88,000 miles business class award even further, you can add in a stopover to make it even more exciting. A stopover on ANA means you can spend more than 24 hours in a connecting city. So, how can you use this card to your advantage?

Fly from New York City (Zone 6) to Amsterdam (Zone 7) and have a stopover for a week. You then can get a free flight from Amsterdam to Zurich because they are both within the same zone. On your return, you can fly from Rome (Zone 7) back to New York City (Zone 6) or any other destination within Zone 6, including Mexico or Canada.

You’d effectively have the opportunity to visit the Netherlands, Switzerland and Italy (and possibly end your trip in another city other than New York City, perhaps even in Mexico or Canada) for 88,000 miles in business class — the same price as a round-trip award.

Though the mileage requirement remains unchanged at 88,000 miles, the taxes of $224 are quite high, as ANA charges consumers the taxes that are charged by other airlines. To avoid taxes, aim to fly United whenever possible as this airline typically doesn't pass on significant taxes to flyers.