Question
My biggest dilemma when it comes to using points and miles is knowing how to best combine points that fall within the same airline alliance. For example, I know Delta and Northwest merged their rewards programs. How do I best stay on top of airline mergers and know when I can move miles to allied rewards programs?
-- Lauren

Answer
Lauren, airline alliances while promoting exceptional opportunities for members of frequent flyer programs to earn miles, often bring some confusion. As for combining miles between programs, there have been no situations in modern times when airlines of the same alliance have allowed members to combine their miles. The last time this was allowed was in 1998, when both American AAdvantage and US Airways Dividend Miles allowed members to combine miles from the two accounts when they were claiming award travel from either airline. The two airlines enjoyed this kind of partnership then but to today, we’ve yet to see anything similar.

Having said that, there have been situations when airlines and their frequent flyer programs have merged and in that instance the members’ accounts were combined. But in those situations, one of the programs disappeared, as with the mergers between US Airways Dividend Miles and America West FlightFund, between American AAdvantage and TWA Aviators, American AAdvantage and Reno Air QQuickMiles and Delta Frequent Flyer/SkyMiles and Pan Am WorldPass. Outside of these mergers, and the exception I noted above with AAdvantage and Dividend Miles, there are no opportunities to move miles around within the framework of these programs.

Now, there are other ways in which you can move miles between programs (outside of mergers), often requiring a conduit or middleman or middle program, if you will, to accomplish this. Keep in mind that there’s a price to pay for doing this -- devaluation of the base mileage currency you are moving. But the possibility does exist for some programs.

If you are thinking of combining miles between accounts because you have a bunch of orphaned miles in a hodgepodge of programs, there are two tools which might assist you: The Mileage Converter tool on WebFlyer.com is a popular tool that can show you how to convert your miles, and how many miles you’ll end up with. The results can look a little like pretzel logic at times, as you might have to convert through two or three programs before you get the actual miles or points that you desire, but sometimes it might be well worth the effort.

Another useful option is the GPX tool on Points.com. Points.com is an official partner of selected programs and the GPX tool allows members to trade miles or points among themselves legally -- but with fees involved. If you’re interested in consolidating your miles and/or points, this is certainly a tried and true option.

Returning to actual mergers, the best advice is to invest in some sort of research. You can make a habit of reading the newsletters from the various programs you have miles in or rely on things like Google Alerts or Yahoo! Alerts to help you keep track. Since your concern is missing out on information about airline mergers, you could set up an alert with either or both of these services (they are free) and simply have it look for certain key words and it will alert you if ever something happens. For instance, United Airlines continues to say that they expect further mergers in airlines over the next two years. If you are a Mileage Plus member and just don’t have to time to really keep up with all the news, you might set up an alert for “United Airlines AND merger” or “Mileage Plus AND merge accounts”. These alerts can really assist you with knowing when to start paying more attention to the news. The key to this is also understanding that you typically have to do nothing to merge your accounts other than to have the same name and address associated with your various frequent flyer programs. Having one program registered under your home address and another under your business address will often result in mismatches or at the very least, two different accounts in merged programs which leads to more work to identify the problem. I myself ended up with an orphan Delta SkyMiles account even after merging my main Northwest account into SkyMiles. Seems there was a second Northwest WorldPerks account I did not know I had.

But mergers are not just about moving miles. Rather, they are a good time to reconsider what the new program looks like. If it is a true airline merger, then you may have no other choices. If it is a change in partnerships or a change in alliances similar to what happened when Continental OnePass moved its alliance partnership from Delta Air Lines to United Airlines and US Airways, you may want to use the moment to compare your choices. Is the program you’ve given your loyalty to the right one to continue with or is there another program that might better suit your current needs? And since during mergers and partner realignments there are often incentives to stay or leave one program or another, it’s worth your time to reconsider your options.

So, I hope that this look at airline mergers gives you just a few ideas to consider because as the airlines themselves say … the time is ripe for even more changes.