Expiring miles?
 

A friend of mine in the UK says that she received an email about her one pass miles expiring after 18 months of no activity. Is this new?

yes.
http://www.continental.com/web/en-US.../advisory.aspx
Miles currently have no expiry date; however, Continental Airlines reserves the right to impose expiry limits or terminate the OnePass program, thus terminating your ability to claim rewards. The OnePass program will formally end on December 31, 2011, followed by a wind-down period during the first quarter of 2012. Following the wind-down period, your OnePass award miles will be replaced with an equivalent grant of Mileage Plus reward miles. At that point, the Mileage Plus 18-month expiration policy will apply.

But on United:
How long are my Mileage Plus miles valid?
Your miles will not expire provided you earn or redeem miles at least once every 18 months.

So I guess if there's no activity for 18 months, all miles will expire.

A friend [who recently left USA and has no plans to fly soon] has some 8k UA miles that expire in November.

If those miles are transferred to my [newly opened] UA account and that then merged with miles in my existing CO account, will that extend their validity? Or would I still have to use them before their original expiry date?

On a side note, can I pay for transfer [from his acc to mine] fees with my CC?

Many thanks.

If you transfer them then the expiry is extended. And, yes, you would pay the fee with any credit card.

But it quite likely isn't worth it to make that move. Just let the 8K points die or redeem for a magazine or something. You're going to pay way more than the 8K points are worth to effect the transfer.

Thank you, sbm12!

I thought with my orphan 12k CO miles together they could make good one way award [to be used later]... Main benefit being that with US FFPs taxes are much lower than with European ones...