Originally Posted by aspendad

I'm trying to surprise my father by upgrading his flight from LAX to ICN. He doesn't fly much so I had to set up his Asiana account which has a zero balance right now. From what I understand, I use the star alliance website to upgrade Asiana flights. I plan on using AMEX points to transfer to United so that I can book the upgrade. When I go to the Asiana website to upgrade, I can only enter my dad's Asiana mileage account. When I enter his flight info and click next, it says there are insufficient miles to upgrade since his Asiana account has no miles on it.

Can I use my United account to upgrade him or does he need his own United account? Right now I don't have enough points to upgrade him and I don't want to transfer my AMEX points until I figure this out.