When do airline and hotel points expire?

The partner clocks, program by program

Read the row for each program where you hold a balance. Note the shape of the rules: nothing here expires on a fixed calendar date printed at earning time. The four expiring programs all run inactivity clocks, which means the date that matters is the date of your last qualifying activity, and the forfeiture date is that date plus 24 months. For the bank side of the same question, see when transferable points expire.

What counts as activity, and what quietly does not

American's FAQ defines qualifying activity broadly: earn or redeem miles on American or with an AAdvantage partner at least once every 24 months, and American automatically extends the expiration date to 24 months from that activity. Two groups sit outside the clock. Members under 21 are not subject to the 24-month period, provided the profile holds a valid birth date, and once they turn 21 they must have earning or redeeming activity within 24 months of that birthday. Primary AAdvantage credit cardmembers are not subject to the period for as long as the card account is open. American's account view shows the earliest date your miles could expire, so there is no need to reconstruct it from statements.

Marriott Bonvoy is where the trap sits. Marriott's program rules list Qualifying Activity as earning or redeeming points or miles, purchasing points, completing a Qualifying Stay, or converting points or miles with designated partners, and then state that gifting, transferring, or receiving points from another member does not count. A household can pass a balance back and forth all year and change nothing. A conversion from a designated partner is a different event from a member-to-member move under that wording, but check that a Chase or Amex conversion posted as qualifying activity in your own account rather than assuming it. Marriott also says points in Lifetime Elite Status accounts are not currently subject to expiration, while reserving the right to apply a policy to them later, and that an account inactive for five consecutive years may be deactivated.

Hilton Honors lists four ways to keep points in its terms: a stay at a participating hotel, earning points through Hilton or any third-party source including a Hilton co-branded credit card, buying points, or donating points through Hilton's Giving Back program. Hilton's FAQ phrases the list more widely, adding earning or redeeming points with any Hilton Honors partner and registering for a Hilton Honors promotion. Neither page lists sending or receiving points through a member transfer or Points Pooling as activity. Hilton's documents do not say a transfer cannot count either, so treat it as unconfirmed: if a transfer is your only planned activity, confirm with Hilton before relying on it, and make a stay, earn or purchase instead if you can.

World of Hyatt is the one program here whose own pages could not be reached for this check, so this guide relies on the Chase World of Hyatt card agreement, which quotes the rule: a cardmember whose card account is closed loses unredeemed points without qualifying activity in the World of Hyatt program at least once every 24 months. The same agreement says Bonus Points transferred from the card to World of Hyatt will not expire as long as the card account is open, a real exemption for cardholders. For the list of what Hyatt counts as qualifying activity, read Hyatt's own terms inside your account. The World of Hyatt program page covers what the points buy.

Three programs where the clock never runs

Delta states the rule in three words on its SkyMiles overview page: miles don't expire. There is no activity requirement to track and no date to diarize. If you read an article describing a Delta inactivity rule, check its date against Delta's current overview page before acting on it.

Southwest's Rapid Rewards terms say the same thing for points: points do not expire. The one way to lose them there is self-inflicted. The terms add that should a member close the account, the points in it will be forfeited, so the no-expiry promise depends on keeping the account.

United MileagePlus miles never expire either: United announced on August 28, 2019 that, effective immediately, MileagePlus award miles never expire. As with Delta and Southwest, no expiry is not the same as no risk. An account closed by you or shut for misuse takes its balance with it, and every program reserves the right to change its rules. The practical takeaway is narrower: at these three programs there is no date to manage, so any balance you hold there is a scheduling problem, not a countdown. The Delta SkyMiles program page and the United MileagePlus program page cover what those balances buy.

The day you transfer, you trade one clock for another

Every balance in this guide used to be a bank balance, and bank balances mostly have no date attached. The companion guide shows that Amex, Chase and Capital One points survive as long as the account stays open, that Citi publishes no expiration on points earned for its Citi Strata Premier card, and that Bilt turns an account inactive after 18 months without activity. The moment you transfer, that bank-side rule stops applying and the partner's clock takes over from the landing date. A transfer is therefore also a scheduling decision, and it deserves the same care as the ratio you got.

Put concretely: bank points moved into Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt or American today start a 24-month countdown that ends in forfeiture if the account sees no qualifying activity. If the trip is two years away and the booking is not yet open, the safer sequence is to keep the balance in the bank currency, where no countdown runs, and transfer when the award is actually bookable, in the order set out in how to transfer points to an airline. Transfers into Delta, Southwest or United carry no clock risk, because those programs run no clock, so an early transfer there costs you flexibility but not the balance.

There is one more asymmetry worth planning around. Activity after the transfer is what matters, and activity in the bank account does nothing for a partner balance that has already landed. A member can spend heavily on a Chase card all year while a Marriott balance created by an old transfer quietly reaches month 24 and disappears. After any transfer, the partner account is its own account, with its own calendar, and it has to be fed on its own schedule.

Worked dates: three balances, three deadlines

The table below applies the 24-month rule to three stated last-activity dates. Use it to sanity-check your own arithmetic before you trust it, and remember that the account's displayed date wins any disagreement.

Small balances die first, so sweep them deliberately

Inactivity forfeiture does not scale with the size of the balance. A forgotten 6,000-point hotel balance from one work trip dies on exactly the same terms as a 600,000-point balance, and small balances are the ones nobody diarizes. Once or twice a year, sign in to every partner program where a transfer has ever landed, note the last qualifying activity date for each, and deal with the nearest deadline first.

For a small balance approaching its date, the choices in order of cost are: earn something small through a partner channel, which American's FAQ counts when the partner is an AAdvantage partner; redeem the balance for whatever modest award it covers rather than lose it entirely; or, at Marriott and Hilton, buy the smallest points package the program sells, since both programs list purchasing points as activity. What never belongs on this list is moving the balance to a relative and calling it activity: at Marriott the terms rule it out, and at Hilton no published page lists it.

A booked award survives expiry; cancelling it may not

One clause in Marriott's rules deserves its own section because it cuts in a direction most members do not expect. Awards redeemed before point forfeiture remain valid: an upcoming stay booked with points is not cancelled when the rest of your balance is forfeited. The danger arrives if you cancel that award after the points expiration date has passed without new qualifying activity. In that case, Marriott's rules say the points used for the award will expire instead of returning to a usable balance. The practical rule follows directly: if a dormant account holds one valuable future booking, make a small qualifying move before you touch that booking, so a change of plans cannot strand the points.

The wider lesson generalizes even where the exact clause differs. An award booking is a redemption, and a redemption is activity on the day it is made. It is not a standing shield. Once the trip is booked, the remaining balance keeps its own countdown, and any later cancellation returns points to an account whose rules have not changed. Treat a booking as spending, not as protection.

How the partner clocks differ from the bank clocks

Set the two guides side by side and the contrast is the whole story of transferable points. Bank currencies mostly expire on an event, the closure of the account, which is within your control and usually comes with warning. Partner balances in the four expiring programs expire on an absence, 24 months in which nothing happened, which can complete silently while you are spending happily in a different program. That is why the common advice, earn in bank currencies and transfer late, is also an expiration strategy: it keeps your balance in the system with the event-based rule for as long as possible, and starts the absence-based clock only when a redemption is close enough to consume the points.

The three no-expiry airlines invert the logic again. A balance already sitting at Delta, Southwest or United needs no protecting from the calendar, so when a choice of transfer partner is otherwise equal, the no-clock programs are the safer warehouse. Expiration risk and redemption value are separate questions; this guide settles the first, and the Cash or Points Calculator settles the second for any specific booking. More guides on moving points sit on the transfers hub.

Find your own forfeiture date in four steps

For the four expiring programs, your date is arithmetic, not a lookup. Work it once, write it down, and set a reminder well ahead of it.

Keep the written dates somewhere you will see them, such as the same note that holds your account numbers, and re-run the four steps after any large transfer. A transfer changes which program's calendar you live on, and the date that mattered before it is not the date that matters after it.

• Sign in and open the activity page. American shows the earliest date your miles could expire directly; at the other programs, read the posted activity list.
• Find the date of your last qualifying activity: an earn, a redemption, a purchase, or, at Marriott, a conversion with a designated partner. Skip any member-to-member transfer at Marriott, which the terms exclude.
• Add 24 months. That is the date the whole remaining balance is forfeited if nothing else posts.
• Set a reminder 90 days before that date, and plan the smallest qualifying move inside the account that holds the balance: a partner earn, a small redemption, or a points purchase.

Checklist

• Open each partner account and write down the date of the last qualifying activity, not the date of your last login.
• Add 24 months to that date for American, Marriott, Hilton and Hyatt balances; that is the forfeiture date if nothing changes.
• Make the smallest qualifying move well before the date: a partner earn, a small redemption, or a points purchase inside the account that holds the balance.
• Never count a transfer to or from another member as your qualifying move at Marriott, and confirm with Hilton before counting one there.
• Before transferring bank points for a trip more than a few months away, weigh the partner clock in the decision; the bank balance had no date attached, and the partner balance does.