Are you going to transfer to Membership Rewards points to Continental prior to October 2011? And I would like to know your particular reason.

Just a lowly "Polluter" here, I am not transferring to Continental because the transfer rate in Canada is poor.

I actually only posted to make me feel important enough to be worthy of such a serious question.

Yeah I guess I should say October 2011. I am just trying to see if there is anything I am missing. For example...when AA bought TWA...you million mile status, or more recent you could transfer into Southwest and get a free companion pass good for a year. A lot of senior flyer talk members know more than anyone.

Good question. I am toying with the idea of transfering a couple hundred thousand miles into Continental. My thought is that those miles will subsequently merge into my United Mileage Plus account. Currently DL/SkyTeam is my carrier of choice, but everytime my employer forces me to use United, I have had good luck using miles to upgrade on international routes. Currently when I fly UA, I'm still subsisting off the last few hundred thousand miles remaining from a Diners Club transfer when they severed their relationship with UA. Adding to my UA account with an AX MR transfer via Continental could give me a useful injection of new miles to use for UA upgrades.

I would clean out my MR account in a heartbeat and transfer them to UA if that would help me obtain Million Miler with UA--I think you may be asking this question looking for those types of deals. Alas, I don't think there's any backdoor way as there may have been with TWA merging into American because my understanding is that AA is the only carrier that considers total credited miles on the account toward lifetime status. The other carriers including United only look at elite qualifying miles.

For a Star Alliance award ticket, I know you can transfer miles into any Star Alliance partner to redeem and some have better redemption levels than UA. However, to upgrade on UA, you need UA miles. Thus, with no status currently on UA, it has proven extremely valuable for me to find roundabout ways through Diners Club and now possibly via Continental where I could move miles into the UA program. Every flight I have taken over the last five years on UA has been a Y ticket. For full fares, United is extremely generous, asking only 5,000 miles one way domestically and 10,000 miles one way to Europe to upgrade from economy to the next class of service. So far, I have been lucky enough to obtain a mileage upgrade for every UA flight segment I have attempted. Just not sure whether the CO merger will make that more difficult on the international side.

Thanks. So for someone who wants to Upgrade UA ticket without status makes a good reason.

As a hub-captive flyer, probably.

I would hardly call LAX a captive hub. It's two of one and half a dozen of the other. Would you rather fly LAX to Europe on UA, then connect in the back of the plane on LH to final destination? (i.e. LH does not honor UA upgrades) Or would you rather fly Business Elite on DL from LAX-JFK and connect in the front of the DL plane to final destination? I just don't fly UA unless I am compelled and then the mileage upgrade ameliorates the situation.

Like LAX Russ, I will probably transfer around 200K as the deadline approaches in a year as I have tons of MR.

There are many times when I need to take UA routes, and I will use them for upgrades or awards on UA metal.

I can't transfer MR to UA otherwise, and SPG to UA is at a bad ratio.

I was answering the thread's question. I'm EWR captive.

I might transfer some MR points. Depends on where my balance is after my flying through mid September 2011 and the UA/CO accounts are merged.

And FYI, it is impossible to place strict rules on what gets posted on threads. It is a public, anonymous forum and stuff happens.

I am planning to switch over some miles to CO as for INT flights AC almost never has the dates and DL almost always only has expensive seats and they aren�t so comfortable vs. CO who has a better availability and even if I do pay double they have arguably more comfortable seats so I feel I am getting more bang for my mile

CO and AC should have identical inventory for partners.

I will transfer points if the new program shows signs of being a good value and if I have a need to redeem there. Because a significant part of the value of MR points is their fungability across multiple programs I am not going to transfer them just because I have other points already in CO. Being able to redeem for other MR partners - even where I might not have status or regularly fly - is a great value of the MR program and one that I do not want to give up. Having diversity of points is a good value so long as said deposits/diversity are in sufficient quantities.

I should have specified AC has no option of paying double when there is no availability vs. CO we can at least pay double for CO metal

Even if you have status on UA, I think LAXRuss' point is valid: you can only upgrade on UA with UA miles. Transferring MR points to CO now seems a relatively secure way to get them into the ultimately merged CO and UA FF program. I can't find any other way to get MR points into either the UA or AA programs; if you upgrade from business to first, not coach to business, then UA and AA are practically speaking the only US-based options for international travel: the other carriers (including DL, US, and CO itself) have nothing more than business class on offer.

So, I expect I will also transfer a lot of MR points to CO.

AC does have the wonderful option of paying 20x the points when there's no regular award availability