How to Manage Family Points
 

Our family only flies about once a year on vacation and at least on the few airlines I've flown everyone has to have their own miles account and there is a good chance we won't fly that airline again for a couple years and their points expire. For a while I was trying to do all the little promos, dinning etc. to keep all their miles alive but it just got to be too much trying to keep four different accounts alive for two or three different airlines. Is there any better way to do this? Can the points be rolled into one somehow? I still don't understand why I can't get all the miles when I am the one buying all the tickets.

It's called frequent flyer programs for a reason. Keyword being flyer.

Certain programs have pooling such as JetBlue, and Delta miles never expire. Otherwise, combining miles across different programs are not possible.

We are flyers. The actual keyword here is frequent. If you're going to be a smart ... at least do it right.

I never asked about combining mile across different programs. I just wanted to consolidate the points from my wife and kids into my account for that program so I only have one account's points to keep alive instead of four for each airline we fly.

Most programs have a way for you to give miles to another member. It's not free. The cost of the transfer usually makes this a poor choice unless you need to transfer just a few miles to "top up" one account for an award; if you have the time and do a bit of research, you can often earn more miles for less money by getting on a plane. Still, it counts as activity for both accounts, so transferring the minimum number of miles can also be a way to extend expiration dates.

The British Airways Executive Club FFP offers a "Household Account" which permits the pooling of BA Avios. Avios can be earned and redeemed on all oneworld airlines, plus a few others like Alaska and Aer Lingus.

May I suggest that you monitor your families account with Awardwallet, it will give you the expiration time in a simple and easy format to view. This will help you in doing the activities needed to extend the expiration date. If you are not that "frequent" of a traveler, it will certainly take time to build up the miles or points that will make it worthwhile for redemption. Not knowing where you are flying, perhaps see if one the household or polling accounts previously mentioned might be an option for you. Good luck.

Thank you for the replies. One of the airlines we've flown on is jetBlue which I did find lets you pool your points and I did that. The airline we have the most points with is United. Is there anything I can do to combine those points or accounts somehow or easy way to keep activity on all the accounts besides flying? I do the dinning and shopping but I found it hard to do it on four accounts.

I was using Awardwallet but the main airline I'm trying to keep points alive is United and I remember they ended up blocking them or something. We definitely don't fly enough to rely on miles from flying alone but I do generate a lot of Ultimate Rewards points so it would be nice to not lose the miles we already have to supplement the miles I convert from Ultimate Rewards.

With UA, my understanding is that you can not consolidate the miles. The other thing you can do is see if there are any survey portals that you can create under each person and get rewarded miles/points for answering surveys. Some of them are mypoints, e-rewards. Depending on how many people are involved, this might be too time consuming, unless they where to cooperate with you. Another thing is buying something through the UA shopping portal and crediting the miles to the individual account per transaction done. Another one, is crediting car rentals to the UA account, but the rental must be done under the name of the person that owns the UA account. as well.

And Qantas QF allow QF ff points to be transferred to eligible family member at no cost. One of the few good aspects of the QF ffp.
As above, some ffp's allow miles to transferred at a cost. For most(all?) is poor value.

How many UA ff miles? Does any account have enough ff miles to be redeemed?
For UA keep doing what you are doing. Not many other options
UA thread Consolidated "How to Keep/Refresh Expiring Miles" Thread

Expiry thread Miles/Points that Do and Don't Expire. Click to open the wiki.

The point being, you get miles for flying. You don't get miles for paying.
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Frequent is subjective.

You certainly weren't clear about consolidation, whether amongst the family or across various platform:

Many ffp's are morphing into frequent spender programs. Airlines make good easy money selling ff miles to credit cards vendors, etc.

But its still butt in seat. The rules were setup from the beginning so that flyers get to keep their rewards and not their employers.