spike74

I'm planning to go from NYC area to Key West, Florida with my brother for a weekend this fall. We are planning to use Aadvantage miles for the flights but he is about 20,000 short. We are flying home on a Sunday which jacks up the total miles per person to 80,000 round trip.

I'm considering having him transfer his miles to me and covering him for the miles he is short. I'm also considering buying the miles he needs.

If he transfers the miles he has to me and I get the tickets, is there a charge for the transfer?

I saw there was some promotion involving buying miles with an aadvantage card which I have. How much would it cost me to buy the miles?

What's the best plan?

JDiver

You are securing four one way awards.

There is no reason why two or three awards can't come from one account as opposed to paying a lot of money for "sharing", "gifting" or buying miles. If you want to see the costs for these options, go to https://buymiles.americanairlines.com/en/buygift.

And some of us would suggest the lowest fare tickets might be a better use of miles, but that's a personal decision.

MADPhil

This is the promotion for buying miles: https://buymiles.americanairlines.co...SPOT_EN,US_BUY if you choose not to use your own. It is seldom worth transferring miles.

spike74

Two Questions:

1. JDiver mentioned that booking 2 round trips using miles is really booking "four one way awards". If I booked three awards and my brother booked one, how would we get them to show up on same travel itinerary? Does it matter if we have one itinerary, reservation that has my round trip and just his outbound flight and another with just his return flight?

2. I wasn't planning on covering my brother's whole trip, just the part he doesn't have the miles for. I wanted to receive the miles he has as a partial "payment" for booking the rest. Is a transfer from him to me the best way to do this? Should he just agree to buy a segment for me at a later date? Only problem with that is if he doesn't have enough miles to pay for a segment at a later date. I guess he could buy the miles then to ensure he had enough to pay for a segment in the future.

Thoughts?

arollins

As JDiver mentioned, and perhaps you may not grasp it, is that instead of buying one round trip ticket for the 2 of you, just buy them one way. One set is the two of you together, and the other set separately, from each account. See how much the award cost and compare. The amount of money requested to transfer or buy miles is a lot, not worth it, perhaps just buy the segment in cash if needed.

CloudCoder

If you buy a ticket, those flights start at about $244 round trip. Now if they were three times as much, then it would be time to consider using miles. It makes a lot of sense to buy the cheap tickets outright, and use miles for the more expensive ones.

arollins

No, it does not matter, however, there wont be a single record locator to cover all of your, you could however notify AA to put notes in the ticket TCP (to complete party) and cross reference them.

Be careful with this part, from what I gather is that you want to take ownership of your brother's AA mile for this booking, that will be costly. Best to have him book an award in your name using his miles, provided he has enough, 20k is about one way, or roundtrip depending on city and if you have the proper credit card.

JDiver

You can't get them on the same itinerary (PNR) unless you "buy" them from the same account at the same time. But you can "link" (not genuinely, but read the Wikipost at the top of the page there) as indicated here: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...solidated.html.

There is no such thing as a "round trip award"; AA only offers one way awards. Buying two one way awards to make the itinerary "round trip" does not make that a round trip award. So: one person can secure, say, three awards - two outbound, one return - whilst the other secures the missing return. This is much more cost effective than buying, gifting, etc. miles. The person securing the extra award could be served by the one with fewer miles gifting some meal expenses, etc. (Not formally, as AA would see that as barter, not allowed with AA miles or instruments.)

kb9522

Never worth it to buy or transfer miles.

Just book as many segments with his miles as you can, and book the rest with yours.

Otherwise fall is pretty far away... surely he'll have some more travel between now and then?

spike74

The cheapest round trip ticket for the dates we are considering is $608 if I booked it this second. That's more than double the $244 a previous poster found.

That change your view on using miles instead of paying for it?

My brother has no travel planned between now and this trip so he won't accrue more miles

kb9522

No, it doesn't change my mind.

$608*2/80000 ~ 1.5cpm
($451+$33.85+$30)/(17000 + 3500) ~ 2.5cpm

I'd pay cash for the ticket and save the award travel for another day before buying miles.

spike74

Thanks to the good advice here I will not be transferring or buying miles for this trip. We will use miles the two of us have which will cover it. That would change your calculation. Not sure how one would do the math on existing miles.

MADPhil

It depends a lot on what other use you have for the miles. You will generally get the equivalent of 1.5 to 2.0 cents per mile against a discount coach fare, you can do much better using them for business/first but if you aren't going to earn enough for that then it is pie in the sky. They can also be useful for last minute flights in an emergency if there are seats - but again you would need a good number. So in your case this may be quite a reasonable use of them.

spike74

The flights cost $874.10 round trip per person so feel like we got our money's worth using points for the whole thing.

I booked my round trip and my brother's outbound flight. He used his points for the return flight and will pick up the tab for a few things to make up for the 30,000 points I used for him. No gifting, transferring points thanks to the great advice here as always.

kb9522

So you got ~2cpm in redemption value... that's pretty good.

You made the right choice... it doesn't make sense to buy at 2.5cpm so that you can redeem at 2cpm.

Enjoy your trip and make sure you guilt your brother into many free drinks.