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Old Sep 3, 2012, 5:24 am
  #1  
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Using Miles from Two Accounts

Does anyone know if I can book a ticket with miles from two accounts, belonging to two separate people? (For example, I don't have enough miles in my account for a certain route, but if I add my wife's miles also, then it's enough). Is this possible to do online, or do I need to call an agent?

Thanks for your help in advance!
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Old Sep 3, 2012, 6:00 am
  #2  
 
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Originally Posted by EZaychik
Does anyone know if I can book a ticket with miles from two accounts, belonging to two separate people? (For example, I don't have enough miles in my account for a certain route, but if I add my wife's miles also, then it's enough). Is this possible to do online, or do I need to call an agent?

Thanks for your help in advance!
Unfortunately you cannot combine miles from 2 seperate accounts to book a single ticket.

What you can do is book the ticket as two one ways - one from each account if you have enough miles in each account.

The other option is transferring miles from one account to another but you have to pay 1.5 cents/mile to do that. You are also limited to a maximum of 15,000 miles that can be transferred in to an account.

http://www.ualmiles.com/TransferMiles.jsp
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Old Sep 3, 2012, 7:58 am
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Originally Posted by piyush
Unfortunately you cannot combine miles from 2 seperate accounts to book a single ticket.

What you can do is book the ticket as two one ways - one from each account if you have enough miles in each account.

The other option is transferring miles from one account to another but you have to pay 1.5 cents/mile to do that. You are also limited to a maximum of 15,000 miles that can be transferred in to an account.

http://www.ualmiles.com/TransferMiles.jsp
Though is the mileage the same if you break it out into one-ways? My friend is trying to book EWR-CUN then CUN-IAH(3 day stopover)-EWR for his honeymoon.

We found a EWR-CUN econ saver award but then CUN-IAH-EWR are both standard awards. The total comes out to ~52,500k miles for the total award. For the life of me I can't figure out how it is broken down to add up to 52.5k. I am pretty sure CUN-IAH is 35k and IAH-EWR is 25k which already exceeds the total.
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Old Sep 3, 2012, 8:03 am
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Originally Posted by nova08
Though is the mileage the same if you break it out into one-ways? My friend is trying to book EWR-CUN then CUN-IAH(3 day stopover)-EWR for his honeymoon.

We found a EWR-CUN econ saver award but then CUN-IAH-EWR are both standard awards. The total comes out to ~52,500k miles for the total award. For the life of me I can't figure out how it is broken down to add up to 52.5k. I am pretty sure CUN-IAH is 35k and IAH-EWR is 25k which already exceeds the total.

You're not allowed a stopover on one-way itins. Only if you book the whole thing will the stopover price favorably.
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Old Sep 3, 2012, 8:26 am
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Originally Posted by nova08
Though is the mileage the same if you break it out into one-ways? My friend is trying to book EWR-CUN then CUN-IAH(3 day stopover)-EWR for his honeymoon.

We found a EWR-CUN econ saver award but then CUN-IAH-EWR are both standard awards. The total comes out to ~52,500k miles for the total award. For the life of me I can't figure out how it is broken down to add up to 52.5k. I am pretty sure CUN-IAH is 35k and IAH-EWR is 25k which already exceeds the total.
I'm not familiar with mileage requirements for awards on this route, but I have recently booked award travel using UA miles between USA and Europe. Economy awards are 60k RT, or 30k one-way, with some additional fees. AA has the same policy as UA, but Delta charges 60k for one-way and the same RT.
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Old Aug 18, 2013, 11:17 am
  #6  
 
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Using my points for the two of us

Bit of background:

My husband and I fly 2 or 3 times per year and it's usually with United since that's the only airline to fly into/out of our little airport connecting to LAX. I signed up for the Chase United Mileage Explorer card and currently have accumulated about 53,000 miles. My DH has just over 12,000 miles. I'd like to use the miles for a r/t ticket to New York next year. We should each earn about 6,000 points between now and next March. I'm of the understanding that I can't combine the points so have to find another way to book the two of us on the same flights using award miles.

What do you suggest I do to accomplish this?

P.S. I have NEVER seen so many abbreviations and acronyms in my life!
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Old Aug 18, 2013, 11:24 am
  #7  
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Originally Posted by fyree39
Bit of background:

My husband and I fly 2 or 3 times per year and it's usually with United since that's the only airline to fly into/out of our little airport connecting to LAX. I signed up for the Chase United Mileage Explorer card and currently have accumulated about 53,000 miles. My DH has just over 12,000 miles. I'd like to use the miles for a r/t ticket to New York next year. We should each earn about 6,000 points between now and next March. I'm of the understanding that I can't combine the points so have to find another way to book the two of us on the same flights using award miles.

What do you suggest I do to accomplish this?

P.S. I have NEVER seen so many abbreviations and acronyms in my life!
If you can find saver awards in Y then you would have enough in your account for 2 tickets. If not you would have to transfer miles in increments of 1000 miles up to a max of I think 10,000 (someone correct if wrong amount). It is not too cheap to transfer but can be done. You can go to the UA website to get a price. The one thing you can't do is pay from 2 different accounts.
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Old Aug 18, 2013, 11:26 am
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Originally Posted by Baze
If you can find saver awards in Y then you would have enough in your account for 2 tickets. If not you would have to transfer miles in increments of 1000 miles up to a max of I think 10,000 (someone correct if wrong amount). It is not too cheap to transfer but can be done. You can go to the UA website to get a price. The one thing you can't do is pay from 2 different accounts.
Thank you. As I'm the CC holder, I'm the one who accumulates the points. My biggest goal is to use points for 2 r/t tickets to London. Maybe someday!
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Old Aug 18, 2013, 11:28 am
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Welcome to FT!, fyree39
Originally Posted by fyree39
Bit of background:

My husband and I fly 2 or 3 times per year and it's usually with United since that's the only airline to fly into/out of our little airport connecting to LAX. I signed up for the Chase United Mileage Explorer card and currently have accumulated about 53,000 miles. My DH has just over 12,000 miles. I'd like to use the miles for a r/t ticket to New York next year. We should each earn about 6,000 points between now and next March. I'm of the understanding that I can't combine the points so have to find another way to book the two of us on the same flights using award miles.

What do you suggest I do to accomplish this?...
Where will you be starting from?
A economy saver round trip (RT) for North America is 25K, so with 53K you should have enough already.

An option when you have insufficient miles in one account is to split up the trip as a series of one ways (OW) -- two RTs become 4 OWs and fund 3 from one account and the fourth from another is one example. There are some disadvantages of this appraoch -- if you need to cancel the fees will be higher. Also international award RTs can have a stopover but OWs can not.

If you could provide a bit more info -- such as the mileage required for the individual tickets, we can probably provide a couple of more suggestions.

Originally Posted by fyree39
.... P.S. I have NEVER seen so many abbreviations and acronyms in my life!
You may find this useful
FT Glossary
United Airlines Forum Glossary (a little out of date but still helpful)
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Old Aug 18, 2013, 11:48 am
  #10  
 
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Originally Posted by fyree39
P.S. I have NEVER seen so many abbreviations and acronyms in my life!
There is a glossary link at the bottom of every page that will help with a lot of them, and an airport code lookup link right next to it that will help with others.
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Old Aug 18, 2013, 1:00 pm
  #11  
 
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Originally Posted by WineCountryUA
Welcome to FT!, fyree39


Where will you be starting from?
A economy saver round trip (RT) for North America is 25K, so with 53K you should have enough already.

An option when you have insufficient miles in one account is to split up the trip as a series of one ways (OW) -- two RTs become 4 OWs and fund 3 from one account and the fourth from another is one example. There are some disadvantages of this appraoch -- if you need to cancel the fees will be higher. Also international award RTs can have a stopover but OWs can not.

If you could provide a bit more info -- such as the mileage required for the individual tickets, we can probably provide a couple of more suggestions.

You may find this useful
FT Glossary
United Airlines Forum Glossary (a little out of date but still helpful)
We're really torn as to whether we want to save up and use miles from IYK (or possibly LAX depending on flight schedules) to LHR, or use them for our new hobby of seeing baseball games in distant cities. A Yankees game is on our list for next year with a few days spent in NYC exploring. I'd like to use the miles for baseball games and DH would like to save for London.

Originally Posted by GregMM
There is a glossary link at the bottom of every page that will help with a lot of them, and an airport code lookup link right next to it that will help with others.
Thank you! That helps!
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Old Aug 18, 2013, 1:21 pm
  #12  
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Originally Posted by fyree39
We're really torn as to whether we want to save up and use miles from IYK (or possibly LAX depending on flight schedules) to LHR, or use them for our new hobby of seeing baseball games in distant cities. A Yankees game is on our list for next year with a few days spent in NYC exploring. I'd like to use the miles for baseball games and DH would like to save for London.



Thank you! That helps!
Ah, LHR. Then my statement that you had enough in your account for 2 savers is not quite correct. I was thinking domestic. But the rest holds true about using two accounts to pay.

Last edited by Baze; Aug 18, 2013 at 7:54 pm Reason: fixed typo
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Old Aug 18, 2013, 7:09 pm
  #13  
 
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Miles redemption on same itnerary with 2 different accounts

Wifey and I are planning a holiday trip to Europe. We both have enough miles in our own to be able to afford Business class seats.

This should seem simple right, we each use our own miles to buy our ticket.

We can do this, however, we cant have our planes on the same itinerary. We talked to the mileage plus phone rep and she said this is united policy and if we want to be on the same iterary the miles have to come from the same account.

Has anyone else had experience with this? I still find this very hard to believe.
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Old Aug 18, 2013, 7:10 pm
  #14  
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Originally Posted by WearyTravellerMSP
Wifey and I are planning a holiday trip to Europe. We both have enough miles in our own to be able to afford Business class seats.

This should seem simple right, we each use our own miles to buy our ticket.

We can do this, however, we cant have our planes on the same itinerary. We talked to the mileage plus phone rep and she said this is united policy and if we want to be on the same iterary the miles have to come from the same account.

Has anyone else had experience with this? I still find this very hard to believe.
It is true. That's the way it works.
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Old Aug 18, 2013, 7:11 pm
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Miles redemption on same itnerary with 2 different accounts

Not hard to believe at all. Separate accounts equals separate itineraries.
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