burgerwars

Any suggestions on the way to do this with the least loss of miles in the conversion?

miler

not very efficient

dspringer28

There is no easy way, and at best you loose 50% of the miles.

jptasker

The only way that I can think of that would give you the option of transferring your United miles to AA miles would be through the Starwood program (Starwood Preferred Guest). I believe this what the previous poster was referring to.

You can transfer your Mileage plus points to Starpoints at a ratio of 2:1. And then 1:1 to AA points. They have made it impossible (correct me if I'm wrong, someone) to transfer your United miles to AA miles, for equal or greater value.

JP

Cygnus X-1

How about BA -> AA (??)

wanaflyforless

I was never aware of a UA-Starwood option. If what the above poster suggests is correct (I doubt it), it would give a little better than 2:1 ratio with the SPG 5K bonus for 20K transfered.

The only one I know works is 50K UA --> 50K DC --> 25K AA or 37.5K BA

There is no BA--> AA good options but you can use BA miles on AA with LOTS of restrictions. (Can't change dates on award tickets or redeposit miles)

benoit

Keeping the miles in UA or transferring them to a hotel program might be best.

Happy

I have some orphan UA miles as results of traveling on Thai and Air Canada - there are no better choices at the time other than dumped them to UA.

Does HHonor accept UA miles ? how about Hyatt Goldpassport ?

jamojdm

I have 3000 BA miles from 2002, and I never fly BA so how do I change them to AA?


Jamo

wanaflyforless

As I stated, you cannot transfer BA miles to AA - if you had enough BA miles you could use them for a free ticket on AA.

3000 BA miles won't do anything for you.

jamojdm

No you said there was no good way to transfer them.

I know 3000 BA miles are useless, hence why i was wanting to change them. Oh well I'll just leave them in my exec club account. You never know I may end up on a BA flight accross the atlantic again one day.


Jamo

burgerwars

Where on the Starwood site do I indicate a UA to SPG transfer? I see the opposite (SPG to a whole bunch of airlines), but not to Starwood. I checked on UAL's site to, and couldn't find any way to transfer miles to this hotel program.

The reason I'm considering doing this, is I have some orphaned UAL miles (about 12,000 of them). I've flown UAL once last year, but can go for years not flying them, so I think having my miles combined elsewhere is best.

landspeed

I'm pretty sure that I remember that William posted that there are no airline programs that transfer into *wood.

Do you have any CO miles you could launder into UA to get a 25K award, or something? Also, I think that there may be a 10K UK-Europe award on BD, for example. The * chart just says "lower award exists for an all-BMI itinerary."

DH

I believe interisland RT award tickets on Aloha is still 5K UA miles...

Stefan Daystrom

So? Unless you end up other than in economy class, it won't matter much (only 25% of actual miles flown) if you just end up on A (single) BA flight.

The way to earn BA miles for someone in the US is not to fly BA, it's through partner activity.

Priority Club hotels such as Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza give only 2.5 miles per $ spent on inexpensive one-night stays with all US airlines but 500 BA miles per stay (and double that starting with your second stay this summer with the current promo). (Although you can get the equivalent of about 3.7 AA miles per $ spent IF you choose to earn points, instead of miles directly, and accumulate around 60k or more points over time, that's still not as good as 500 miles per stay if you're doing inexpensive one-night stays and not charging lots of incidentals.)

Most car rental companies give a paltry 50 miles per day with US airlines, but Avis gives 500 BA miles per rental (and double that through most of June with their current promo).

Many iDine restaurants only allow 1 visit per month per FF program. But if you belong to several FF programs for iDine, you can visit the same restaurant several times each month, using a card signed up for a different FF program each time. Might as well make Executive Club Dining one of those.

BA Visa will cost you $75 annual fee but will get you 15k miles for that.

Meanwhile, you'll get FAR FEWER than 15k BA miles for a transatlantic discount economy ticket which will cost you MANY TIMES $75!

So if you're going to stay in Executive Club in the hopes of someday using those miles, the only practical way is to start at least occasionally getting partner miles into your account (say, only in those cases where you can earn a lot more BA miles for that activity than AA miles, such as car rentals), rather than expecting one more paid flight on BA to make your miles useful...

Meanwhile, your 3000 miles will expire if you don't have ANY activity in your account for 3 years. So for that reason alone it's good to have at least some partner activity once in a while if you have no idea when you might fly BA again.