Transferring HA miles to Hilton HHonors
 

I recently transferred some miles to HHonors to top up for an award. The miles disappeared right away but it's been about 10 days and no points in the HHonors account yet. I did a search but didn't find anything that wasn't a couple of years old. Does anyone have any experience who could tell me how long I should wait before inquiring from one of the two programs? Thanks. :)

Mahalo. I didn't get a call back but perhaps I called the right person from the get go. I called the HA number that in on the HHonors website.

Thanks for the tips, I had 6k orphan miles about to expire-- I called up and had them transferred to my HHonors. I could only transfer 5K, but that's better than nothing. It only required one phone call for me, and I was sure to have HA update my profile to have my middle initial so it would exactly match my HHonors account.

The transfer process took just over three weeks from the day I called to when the miles showed up in my HHonors account... I was beginning to think something went wrong, because these miles were not earned through flying (from Live/Bing Search Club...), so I didn't want to bring any extra scrutiny to the transfer ;)

Is there a limit to the number of miles you can transfer or do they just transfer them in blocks of 5K?

The latter, as far as I know. The only restriction is that they can't be miles that were transferred in from, e.g., Amex

So does that mean I can't transfer Starwood to Hawaiian and then transfer those miles to Hilton? That was the suggested procedure as described in Inside Flyer. Where can I check to be sure?

Correct.

Miles can be earned by flying HA, flying HA partners and crediting to HA, miles from HA's shopping portal, but transferred Amex or other points/miles will not count.

Inside Flyer and its mileage converter have had this mistake for quite awhile.

It is possible that you would get an HA agent who was green or forgot to check the source of your miles, but given that it's a two step verification (and talking to an HNL-based person on the second call) I wouldn't bet on it.

Would SPG to AA to Hilton work?

I read all about AA to Hilton and have not seen that your cannot do this.
Although all my miles are earned with aa so I have no data points to contribute.

Probably need to ask that question in a different forum. :)

What about bonus miles for getting the HA Visa card? Are those acceptable to transfer? There has been some question about this on the Million Mile Secrets blog.

Those are all fine. You earned them originally with HA. It's only miles transferred in to HA that you can't transfer elsewhere. As we've learned in OMNI, however, everything if fungible. I wonder if you transferred 50,000 in now and waited two years, what would happen. :D

According to the Webflyer Mileage Converter, you can convert them directly from SPG to Hilton.

Does anyone know how this restriction is applied in practice?

Does an agent "eyeball" your account history or is there some counter of "bad" amex miles versus "good" HA miles?

If there's a counter, how are actual flight awards redeemed - bad miles first, good miles first, old first, proportional, etc?

I've earned a lot of HA miles from HA but have also done Amex transfers in the past. I' curious whether this would affect the number of HA miles I could transfer to Hilton if I wanted to.