Everybody do the FF miles shuffle!
 

Hi All,

With the help of FlyerTalk, I have managed to accumulate a fair amount of miles in the last few years.

I have mail ordered wacky items and gone on random goose chases. It has been fun and I owe it all to FlyerTalk :).

However, the time has come to inject some strategery into my miles accumulation.

I live in Southern California. How can I best merge the usage of the miles programs below?

American Airlines AAdvantage
15,970 miles

Continental OnePass
6,620 miles

Delta SkyMiles
46,434 miles

Frontier Airlines - EarlyReturns
2,359 miles

HawaiianMiles
15,514 miles

Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards
9 points

United Airlines - Mileage Plus
1,973 miles

US Airways - Dividend Miles
21,946 miles

Thanks for the help everyone!

Derek

wow .. talk about target confusion .. why did you do that, Derek?

points.com might slightly help you ... or maybe negotiating a transfer with some other person, but how you'd trust 'em i have no idea

Some of the accounts you can simply forget about them with their low balances.

There is NO effective way to transfer miles. The low balances also preventing you to do some creative award redemption. Though your AA account balance would let you redeem a one-way award but your UA account balance is too low so you cannot structure a r/t ticket with AA redemption on one direction and UA redemption on the other direction (can only be done on UA Metal though).

You need to figure out where you normally fly, and where you want to go in the future, then decide which airline(s) suit your needs the best, and concentrate your earning on that airline(s) program(s).

While your DL account has the highest balance, you need to realize that miles are not created equal - for 40K DL miles you would be lucky to get a domestic r/t which other airlines can easily get with 25K miles. You probably want to redeem all your DL miles and be done with the program.

There is a several pages long, ongoing thread in this forum and the almost unanimous conclusion is DL is the airline that is the most stingy in making award seat available.

AA, UA, US and even CO, would be candidates for you to do more research regarding which program to concentrate on based on your own needs. Since UA, US & CO are all members of Star Alliance, you should pick one based on your travel pattern instead of stretching yourself because based on the account balances I dont see you have the ability to maintain 3 programs in a meaningful way.

Hawaii Airlines - check if they still offer transfer to HHonor points eventhough Hilton has drastically devalued its program, I assume the 1:2 ratio remains and 30K HHonor points may still get you a free night somewhere.

check out webflyer.com

Thanks for the advice everyone. Yeah, I kind of screwed up my mileage accumulation. :rolleyes:

It looks DL is not the hottest program. There aren't any other U.S. domestic carriers in SkyTeam either. I will hold onto the DL points and add to them when I am forced to fly DL.

I will try to combine the rest of my miles into the US program. I often end up on US or UA when I can't fly SWA.

One minor bright side with having Delta miles: They allow a free domestic stopover on an award ticket. So, if you can find the tickets you want (which can be difficult, esp. in/out of southern CA) you can get a lot more value out of the miles you need to spend. I have done this multiple times, and sometimes I have to call.

Here's the direct link: Webflyer Mileage Converter

Keep in mind, most FFPs are not transferable. Even when they do, you lose a big chuck through the process. Your Delta Skymiles is the only one that might get you a free domestic ticket. To be quite honest with you, none of your current balance is worthy losing sleep over in savvy FTers' eyes.

If you had religiously and correctly follow FT and FTers' tips during the last couple of years, you should have built a much higher account balance in all of your programs (unless you'd redeemed quite some miles already).

Welcome to FT!

:eek::eek:

Don't blame FT for that! ;)


What are you trying to accomplish with your FF miles?

A free domestic trip every year or two?
Then collect miles with the airline that goes where you want to fly to.

An international trip in J/F every few years?
Now you have to look at alliances and award availability.

For instance, from LAX you might decide you want to fly to Oz.
Do you want to fly on United or QANTAS?
If the former collect miles with UA
If the latter collect miles with AA

Europe?
Want to fly on BA, AA, LH?
If one of the first two, collect miles on AA
The latter? UA.

Tell us what your goal is and we can help you out. Right now it looks like you are collecting miles just foe the sake of collecting miles.

Decide what your goal is and focus on the program that best suits your needs.


Oh, maybe you can use those random miles for some magazines, hotel nights, or a flight or two....

That looks like my portfolio about 3 years ago. What are your fliying patterns?

My strategy was to earn to topoff and redeem for domestic awards in the programs I was going to dump. Didn't pay for a single flight in 2008 :D. At minimum you will want to winnow down UA/US/CO to a single account unless you are flying two of these a lot. US is not a popular choice but if it works for you, all the better. I would abandon the UA and F9 accounts and looks at possibley converting CO to Amtrak points, if you use rail.

Also, why no Alaska account? You can deposit future DL and AA activity there.

[QUOTE=dbasch;13470470]Hi All,

With the help of FlyerTalk, I have managed to accumulate a fair amount of miles in the last few years.

I have mail ordered wacky items and gone on random goose chases. It has been fun and I owe it all to FlyerTalk :).

However, the time has come to inject some strategery into my miles accumulation.

I live in Southern California. How can I best merge the usage of the miles programs below?


Best options in my opinion is open a couple of credit cards picking up sign up bonuses (normally 20K- 25K) to get your accounts to a level where you can redeem a ticket. Other option for Hawaiian and American is to transfer into Hilton 15K= 30K Hilton Honors points. You could get a couple of hotel nights if you transfer both of those, especially if you add a Hilton CC.

I agree--open credit cards to top off accounts, take/give trips and enjoy!! And focus better for future mileage earnings. I've got some similar odds and ends of mileage in various accts, earned on oddball airlines to end of the world destinations--plan to let them die.

and since we are on this ... i got about 5K award miles on M&M, can i get them out? to US, for example

neither webflyer nor points.com partner with LH ((

Good advice on the credit card front: pick which ones could use the credit card opening bonus to get up to a free ticket, and go.

Now, one thing nobody else has said here (but an old timer like me knows well through experience) is that you're looking at this two-dimensionally, friend. TIME is one of your allies with some of the programs, but not all. For example, the WN Rapid Rewards program gives you a strict 24 mo. cutoff to get that 16th credit, and then you forfeit credits. How long do you have to get the last credits? If it's short, well, time's-a-wasting and you need a new business or personal WN Rapid Rewards card NOW.

With programs like American's, you've got a cutoff (18 mos. with no activity, I think..... I never come close), and you can do absolutely brainless stuff in order to keep it alive (buy something from the mileage mall, dining, etc.), and then just allow your youth to atrophy, your hair to get grey, etc., and over time you'll be up to the magic award you wanted. This is like a marathon, if you're smart: put these mini-miles on the shelf and figure out just what aspirational award you want to get to, then develop a plan, execute it, and enjoy the passage of time until you get there.

I've been on this travel point collection scheme for years and years. I'm in every program, and I just keep collecting (all the while making SURE to keep each program alive, even buying points as a last resort), and after this many years I pretty much go wherever I want to go, whenever, and have taken some of the sweetest and most expensive trips (almost) for free. This is the reward for loyalty, business travel (and seriousness) over many years.

Even though it seems like you've got a mishmash of points left over there (I assume you've used all the awards you could, and that's why this mishmash is left), you can get yourself some fairly valuable awards simply by being pragmatic and designing a plan, then executing it. See you on the road, and don't forget you're in this to get value out of the travel you're already paying for!