Originally Posted by the_traveler
I've done this too with my sister's account. She had something like 24,948 miles in her Mileage Plus account. Since she does not fly very much, these miles were basically orphaned. So when dining, we used her idine CC, and her total climbed to 25,026 miles, and she used an award ticket!
26 orphaned miles is much better than just under 25K!
I'm pretty sure that UA would have given your sister the extra miles to get a 25,000 award if she asked politely.