My friend and I are going to the same wedding in SMF in July. The tix from ORD are in the $400 range. She doesn't make much money (or fly a lot) so she tried to use her 28k miles for a Saver ticket. Of course there was 0 Saver availability.

I told her I would give her the 12k miles she needed to book a Standard Award ticket. So what does United charge me for this little transfer: $145 consisting of .01 cents per mile + a $25 transaction fee.

Is this not ridiculous? What could it possibly cost UAL to move 12k miles from one person's account to another? Wait I know the answer to this question: ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!

It's kind of a sickening to think that in a lot of ways we are nothing but revenue to the airlines. We pay good money for flights, earn miles, and then cannot even gift them to someone else without being charged for it. Now I would understand if there were costs involved in the transaction, but how could it possibly cost them $145 to transfer miles??

While I was completing the transfer form, I looked into what it cost to Gift and Buy miles. $696 for 25k miles? WHO ARE THEY KIDDING??