My best mate and his girlfriend flew return Hawaiian air from SYD to HNL recently and I'm wanting to redeem and transfer his miles thru AA to my account as he is not a frequent flyer. I have looked at transferring them via the send miles to a friend option and AA is wanting to charge me a small fee and my first born which makes it ludicrously expensive and a complete waste of money.

Is there a way to redeem the miles in his name (I'm assuming I can claim his gf's through his AA account) and transfer them to me without paying a small fortune or anything at all?

Is it possible to redeem them to a hotel program and then transfer the hotel credits to my AA account for free?

Everybody loves free but I can't seem to find an article on how to transfer miles for free? Surely there would be someone devious enough to figure this out.

Any help/suggestions would be much appreciated, thanks!