Hello,

My name is Cris. I am sorry if I am not posting it on the appropriate Forum.
I will be travelling from Toronto to San francisco, sometime in August. My husband is the luck one who has all the points. I know that through Aeroplan he can book the flight under my name and therefore no need to transfer ( and lose ) points. However, it gets a bit more complicated, and that is what brought me to this forum:

My husband has some reasonable mileage points available in two different products: 22000 on Aeroplan and 20000 points on Amex Gold rewards. On the other hand I ( such a loser ) have only 601on Airmiles.

My questions are:
Is there a way to join all the points into one product only? Is this a worthy move? If I am buying a ticket and paying with Aeroplan (let's say) can I pay the remaining balance ( if not enough aeroplan points ) with my Airmiles, or use part of the Amex Gold Rewards? Combine products?

What would be better: To book online through Aeroplan, or Travel Agency?

I apologize in advance for these questions. We have never used mileage points before. Newbie here

Thanks in Advance!

Cris

Cris-

This was your first post - no need to apologize. That said, you are joining a board that LIVES for frequent flier miles and your balances, at this point, are rather small. At this point, at least to me, your challenge should be how to accumulate more points rather than thinking about how to use them! Seems your from Canada so I have no real idea about the credit card bonuses you have available to you up there but that's most certainly the first place to look.

Good luck and welcome to FT!

Steve

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry: BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.1030 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/417)

Amex MR points should be convertable to Aeroplan miles. For travel between YYZ and SFO, Aeroplan miles can be redeemed on either AC or UA.

Amex MR points can also be converted to BA Avios, which can be redeemed on AA for YYZ-ORD-SFO, for example.

Both Aeroplan and BA offer one-way redemptions, just in case award seats are only available in one direction with either program.

just don't forget that BA executive club charges per leg whereas programs like aeroplan charge point-to-point and that's 25k aeroplan points for a flight in n. america. that can be an advantage or a disadvantage depending on the route.

another potentially important factor is that amex points transfer instantly to aeroplan whereas they take a few days to transfer to BAEC.

i would recommend that you do searches for award flights and then make your decision. good luck.

Before you transfer any points over make sure to check for availability. August is very busy and there is not a lot of availability left

If you have 22000 Aeroplan + 20000 Amex rewards, that'll get you 42000 Aeroplan. You may consider booking a roundtrip flight for 25,000 points and a one-way for 12,500.

My inclination, though, is just convert enough Amex rewards to Aeroplan to get you to 25,000, good enough for a roundtrip or 2 one-ways, and leave the rest.

There are still some good credit card signup referral offers out there to add a lot to your Aeroplan and Amex Rewards totals.

I would signup for some credit cards so you can get more miles , and do something more useful with those miles

Hmm i think sometimes canadians can apply for american credit cards (Maybe amex)