Originally Posted by
smiles33
I want to book travel for my family of 4 and upgrade to Polaris. I have 170K miles in my account (need 240K for the particular route we're looking at) and they have about 15-20K each. I know I have to transfer some Chase points in to make up the difference, but can I use some of their miles for free? Or do I have to pay to transfer their miles to my account to upgrade all 4 of us? I assume there's no way for me to avoid the fee by transferring some Chase points to each of their 3 accounts to pay for one outbound flight upgrade and then I use my miles to pay the other inbound flight upgrade.
Thanks!
P.S. I tried looking this up on the United website but the FAQ isn't very helpful. I see that it's a $15 fee per 1,000 miles, so transferring up to 60K miles from their 3 accounts into mine would cost me $900.
Upgrading a family of four to Polaris may be pretty unrealistic to impossible depending on the route and your status with the airline. I'd do some serious investigation on the likelihood of upgrades clearing on your route of choice before spending money moving miles around.
You have to pay to transfer miles between accounts, family or not. Whether it's worth it is obviously yours to decide but I can't imagine it being worth it, unless you have a guaranteed upgrade that definitely won't go away between the time you apply to have the miles moved and the time they show up in the recipient's account.
Also, just FYI, you don't need the miles in their separate accounts. If you have the miles you need for an upgrade, even a one-way upgrade—let's say it's 30,000 one way—in any specific account, those miles can be used to upgrade any ticket. You can use 30k from one account and 30k from another account to upgrade the out- and inbound legs of a flight. The individual flying doesn't need to have the miles in their account. And each member of your family absolutely doesn't need to have 60,000 miles in their account for the round trip.