The only way I can figure out how to get Continental miles into an America West account would be:

Continental --> Amtrak --> Midwest Miles --> Points.com --> America West

9000 Continental miles becomes 1318 America West miles.

Actually, if you had a Diners Club card, you could do:

Continental --> Amtrak --> United --> Diners Club --> America West

This way you'll only suffer 50% devaluation.

By the way, 20k America West miles used to be enough for a capacity controlled coach award ticket systemwide. Now it takes 15k miles for shorter flights and 25k for longer ones. See http://www.americawest.com/flightfun...eemchanges.htm

It shouldn't be hard to top off the HP account, though. The bonus miles on an America West Visa put you over the top.

Finally, while there isn't a way to directly combine your America West and Northwest miles, you can use America West miles to claim a flight on Northwest and you can use Northwest miles to claim a flight on America West. In other words, you can use miles from each of your accounts to claim award tickets on the very same flights. No reason to actually combine the miles into the same account to do so.