Originally Posted by
tom911
AA and UA have ways to work around that without actually flying, such as donations to one of their charities or a purchase from their shopping mall. I had a friend whose 200,000 United miles were due to expire end of March and she was able to extend them 18 months in this manner.
USA based ffp's tend to better for this. And have other non flying ways of earning miles.
But some ffp's have a hard expiry: use them or loose them. Like with EK the miles expire 3 years after earning.