FlyDeltaJets87

Would that benefit be extended to the person receiving the ticket? If I book a Skymiles ticket through my account for someone who is not Medallion, they don't receive complimentary bags and can't access EC or receive other benefits.

@jakemalloy
Here's another problem with your plan, per Delta.com
Yearly Maximums:
•Maximum mileage deposited to a SkyMiles account per year: 300,000
•Maximum mileage transferred from a SkyMiles account per year: 150,000
You can't transfer 240,000 miles to your son and his wife. You would be exceeding the maximum transfer rate.
https://www.delta.com/buygftxfer/dis...erMiles.action

As mentioned above, best deal is for you to book the tickets for them and then have them book you a ticket when they've accumulated the mileage. Gets the same result. Saves a lot of cash. And unlike transfering 240,000 miles, it's possible.

WWGuy

Something doesn't make sense here. jakemalloy, you made the following post last week in this thread.

Without clarification from the OP(s), I can only guess that father & son must be sharing the same FT account. If so, the suggestions above for booking award tickets through each others SkyMiles accounts should be no problem.

jakemalloy

They are both me - just didnt want to have two user names. I am trying to either get him the miles he needs or transfer them myself.

The alternatives offered here make sense. The reason it will not likely work is that with the miles returned to me I will be buying a round the world ticket or a ticket on Delta that will require more than the 240K miles. So they would not have enough to just buy the ticket for me - which I agree is simple. The returned miles will be part of a larger mile ticket, if that makes sense.

Regardless, I appreciate the input.

FlyDeltaJets87

Well the only way around it (partially) is for you to book their tickets now, so as to incur no transfer fee at least one-way, but then when they accumulate the miles to "repay" you, they have to pay to transfer them or gift you the miles or whatever. That would save approximately $2400 in transfer fees one-way, but they would still be hit with the $2400 in transfer fees when they transfer the repayment miles back to you so you can use the miles as you wish (and as pointed out, they would have to figure out to get you 240,000 between the two of them because the most one person can transfer to you in a year is 150,000 miles so the other one would need to come up with the other 90,000, and of course, this would incur two transfer fees, not one).

roknroll

Doing what FlyDeltaJets87 proposed is probably the best compromise. You would book the tickets for them with your miles, and then they would transfer the miles back to you and pay the fee. And if they plan it well, they could drastically reduce the transfer fees by spreading the miles around from various sources.

Based on the post in the other thread, sounds like the son and fiancee are using CC signup bonuses to accumulate the miles. Between the two of them, and over the next 3-6 months they could focus on cards that give them points that transfer to Delta. The offer is now gone, but there was just an AMEX Premier Rewards Gold offer that gave 50,000 bonus points. If each had got that card, then they could transfer 100k miles to you for a nominal fee. Similarly, they could get the SPG AMEX which gives 25k SPG points after some base spend, and those also could transfer to your Delta account without the fees.

So if they could get various credit cards, focusing on building AMEX Membership Rewards and SPG points, they might be able to reduce the price to transfer the miles back to you by a good amount.

roknroll

Platinum benefits such as free bags, free/discounted EC, priority check in, etc only apply to the person with status and those on the same reservation as them. Booking a ticket for someone who is not a medallion won't transfer those benefits to them.

The free award changes/cancellation does transfer though. For this, DL looks at the status of the account where the miles came from and not the person flying. So if a PM books an award for a non-status passenger, they can make free changes. If a non-status passenger used their miles to book travel for a PM/DM, then they would be subject to the change fee. Status is also based on current status when requesting the change, and not status at the time of booking.

SuperG1955

The son can get an AMEX Green or Platinum card, either of which earn MR points. The MR points can be transferred to any SM account.
You can sped up the process if the father also charges to the card (and pays for his charges).

Efrem

It makes absolutely no difference whether you transfer the miles to them, assuming that was free which is isn't, and they get the tickets, or you get the tickets for them. You end up in the same place either way: you're out 240K miles, and they have two tickets. There is no reason to pay a penny more for that than you have to.

What happens after that, how they decide to return the favor, is a totally separate issue. It is not part of the first transaction no matter how you handle that transaction. Do not confuse the issue, here or in your own mind, by putting that into the discussion. There is no reason why both parts of the deal have to be done the same way.

mapsgl

This x 100