Can Spouses Combine Miles?
 

Can my wife & I combine our AA miles to claim one free ticket?

Unfortunately not. The only time they allow combining is to a surviving spouse. For a free ticket, it's just not worth it!

Is BA the only FF program with the Household account feature, wherein up to four people in the same household can combine their miles? I think this is a great feature, one which other airlines should really adopt.

/gwl

BA does offer this benefit, but they are also much more stingy when it comes to giving out miles and upgrades.

Are you saying that if I die, my wife can still use my miles? And vice versa?

Maybe "officially" AA doesn't allow you to combine miles between spouses, but when trying to figure a way to upgrade both myself and my husband last January, AAdvantage offered me that option (pulling miles from my husband's account into mine). So, perhaps it is worth asking about......the worst they can say is no :-)

That's correct, 4miles. A written request, copy of will showing spouse survivorship, copy of the death certificate, and a check for $100.00 (I believe that's the correct amount) and the miles will be transferred into the surviving spouse's account.

ExecDeskRep

Several hotel programs allow this (Hilton, Starwood). It may be possible to use Hilton to allow miles to be combined, but the exchange ratio AA->Hilton is so bad that it does not seem worth it. With some other airlines where the ratio Airline->Hilton is double that of AA->Hilton, it may be a smaller penalty to transfer miles from the airline to Hilton, and then use Hilton points to get a free airline ticket.

Continental had a unique promotion which allowed miles to be transferred from one account to another for a fee.

An affadavit, death certificate and $50.00 transfer fee is what is needed to transfer deceased miles.

" An affadavit, death certificate and $50.00 transfer fee is what is needed to transfer deceased miles."

Wow-this is new info that I never knew. I was always concerned that if I expired with all those miles my wife couldn't use them. thanks

I'm trying to think through how this will affect demand (as manifested via load factors, fares, upgrade policies, etc.) on both BA and AA.

The obvious outcome is that at least some of the folks who currently fly AA to LHR will switch to BA. Flat beds in J are nice going east, after all, and I think most people would find BA's F product superior to AA's (with the possible exception of the Flagship Suite -- only available on some LHR routes, but not from my own BOS, for example). All this suggests that to keep at least J loads balanced, BA would need to charge higher fares, AA would need to offer more bonus miles on its own metal, or the market would need to equilibriate in some other way.

Has anyone else thought this through? Sketched out specific possible methods of assuring that loads and fares remain in balance? Estimated how big a factor this might be? I didn't find anything in a quick Google search or a quick search of this forum and BA's, but there may be threads or columns that lurk nonetheless.

My own guess: When buying J fares, I'd probably stick with AA and upgrade to F (which I don't expect to be able to do on BA, of course). If no AA F upgrade were available (for whatever reason), I'm pretty sure I'd choose BA over AA in transatlantic eastbound J, especially if LHR connections and lounges remain as they are now, but for perhaps 10000 extra miles each way, AA could keep my busines on their metal. (Not sure 10000 miles is really my price, though. Have to think about this some more!...)

The Skywards programme has this feature too, if you happen to be into flying Emirates and SriLankan......