Originally Posted by srelyea
That's a good idea. I don't really care which airline I fly, and if Lufthansa allows you to use USAir and United miles for tickets, that would work great.
Do you think this is the best way to go? Are there any other options that would let you indirectly transfer miles to a third-party rewards program, where you could bank them together?
Thanks.
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If you try to do a transfer somehow between programs, you'll lose a good chunck of miles in dilution through a points transfer service. Since US and UA are both in Star Alliance, you get to use the full value of the miles on a Star Alliance carrier.
You just need to pick which Star Allaince carrier you want to fly on, then call either UA or US (whichever miles you want to pay for a ticket with) and tell them you wqant to book an award ticket on one of the Star Alliance carriers.
I just booked an award on Qantas using USAIR points via the US-Qantas partnership. I could have also used AIR New Zealand on a Star Alliance award, but the business class award on Qantas was fewer miles than the Star Allaince buswiness class award from North America to Australia/New Zealand.
You can go to the Star Alliance web site and they have a time table you can use to figure out which Star Alliance carriers fly to what locations. Also, you'll need to look at the Star Alliance award chart for the mileage cost of the trips you want to take. I know the chart is available on USAIR's site, probably also on the Star Aliiance.com site as well.
You may have trouble finding award seats depending on where you want to fly, when you want to fly, class of tickets you want to get and how many award seats you are looking for.
The airlines look like they are holding back more of the business class seat awards until closer to departure to see if they sell. So if you want to get 4 business class seats to a popular destination, you might not b able to book the award months in advance, or book a bunch of business class seats all on the same flight, etc.
But, that is like playing the lotttery anymore--you just try and see what is available. I had to keep trying for 2 weeks to get the Qantas award booked through USAIR, but I was getting the award for my sister and she had a fairly restrictive set of dates. The more flexible you are, the easier you will find what you are looking for.
Good luck!!
