You occasionally get rare opportunities to do this for specific airlines. For example, at certain times of the year you can use Diner's Club as an intermediary to near-1:1 into British Airways, provided your source miles will convert to DC. And I think Amtrak can provide some limited 1:1 conversion opportunities.

Other than special cases, conversion rates to push miles around are pretty brutal.

If you have FF miles that you truly feel are useless (even for partner airline award redemptions), your best bet might be to push 'em into a hotel program and stop right there. Use the points for free hotel stays. (Not that I'd personally do that with 200k. I'd try awfully hard to find a use for them in their current form.)

Or redeem 'em for a bazillion magazine subscriptions.

[This message has been edited by pinniped (edited Dec 04, 2003).]