You have a lot of homework to do. One option might be to switch to AA. Buy the cheapest Y-cabin fare which works for your travel needs. With that kind of volume, you'll hit PLT during the first year, and be earning plenty of e-"stickers" for upgrades. Elite level multipliers will soon get you to EXP, at which point you'll have first tier access to unlimited domestic upgrades, no stickers required.

not really an option as I and my partner will not fly economy on that route. So if there is any chance at all that I'm not flying in J or F, I won't take the flight-- thus it is important to use miles to purchase the tickets as they are the only method to 100pct confirmation.

The Star Alliance Award Rules prohibit date changes once travel commences. As far as I know, all the airlines have that rule and it is enforced. It is what makes the big difference in flying a star airline instead of the airline whose miles you are redeeming. If they told you return date could be changed, they meant until you commence travel (or they were misinformed). Suggest: contact airline with the reservation and ask to change, hope for a schedule change that you could then ask for a change of a day.... etc. just don't expect to get what you want. Try to find travel insurance that would cover it... Or get UA miles instead of US miles....

As an example of how unrealistic your goal of posting any and all of the best ways to accumulate miles let me present the following. Your suggestion about UA offering 25 miles per dollar spent for FTD is nowhere near what is out there already. Had you either

1. been around FT awhile and read a couple of forums for info or:
2. searched and read the threads in the first couple pages already

You would know that the link in the xmas offer for 1500 bonus miles PLUS 30 miles per dollar spent is still active. This puts your find to shame and is readily available to purchase spafinder gift certificates btw for huge amounts of miles.

Great idea!!

.........................

A quick google search and I found the 30 miles/$.

http://www.ftd.com/ualsolo30C

I'm a little surprised by the hostile reception that you've gotten so far. Perhaps the phrasing has thrown people off. I don't think OP is asking FT to do the homework for him. He's obviously read many of the threads. He's asking a question that I am particularly focused on as well: if one wants to use just cash, what are the key ways to *purchase* miles in bulk?

This question is not a request to repeat the best deals on FT. Many of the FT deals are for 1,000 miles here, 5,000 miles there. I don't think that's what the OP is looking for. He wants to scoop up "hundred thousand miles".

Also, most of the deals on FT involve expending a certain amount of time and energy to get miles (e.g. apply for a credit card, get 25k miles, use cc to get to required spend level, verify miles are credited, call to cancel credit card, repeat). I think OP also is not interested in these legwork-for-miles deals. There's nothing wrong with those deals but if we assume OP has more money than time, and his goal is to buy, say, 1 million miles, what's the best way to do it if he does not have restrictions on how much he can spend?

My best suggestion would have been bankdirect but OP has said that doesn't work for him. The next best thing might be to explore his idea to band together to purchase them. If a group of us wanted to pool together to buy 10 million miles, could we do it? Perhaps we'd have to form a nominal corporation to do it. If the number's not 10 mil miles, maybe a bigger number like 20 mil or 50 mil would get their attention. At a high enough price and volume, the airlines are willing to sell their miles to partners like Bankdirect or FTD. I think for the airlines, it's just purely a numbers decision; they don't care if they're selling the miles to Bankdirect or NewcoFTcorporation.

Let's pool mental resources and brainstorm!

So happy to see some enthusiasm finally! Yes, that is exactly my point. My income is such that I can't afford to purchase full-fare first class at whim, but can afford to pay more than coach fair and want to travel in j or f. Basically ill pay around 700-1000 a ticket as need be for longer haul travel. There seem ways to do this, but the airlines cap how many miles you can buy, so we find work arounds. Bankdirect is ultimately not the best because once you have enough money to make it worthwhile (300-400k miles per year) that becomes real capital to invest somewhere else and make a 5-10 percent return. But would I spend 4k to buy 400k airlines miles I could redeem for 4 rt f tickets to europe Asia that would normally cost 10-15k each, thus getting 40-60k of value for four grand? Certainly! And the bigger loopholes we find, the more it's worth it. Think of finding a way to get miles at half a penny. You'd go nuts and just do aa anytime awards in first whenever you wanted. And we are the intelligent guys and gals to find just those opportunities. The FTD idea was great- I'm doing a trial run and just bought 2 certs I'm putting on bay a
To see what happens. If it works maybe I can buy a million miles on the airline(s) of my choosing at a penny a mile. For the last 6 months us has been effectively selling them in unlimited quantity for between a cent and a cent and a half.

So nice to see some more enthusiasm here! And what more I find in this realm, what more good ideas, I shall post immediately.

Happy hunting!

I'd be interest in banding together to purchase. I tried to buy some through the American Airlines "OrderAAmiles" in the business section of their website. We are having our annual meeting in Jamaica in March and I thought it would be cool to give out some miles to our key employees as a reward. We are a small company and I want to buy 200,000. But I could not do it as we don't have a website and that is a "required" field on their form. I guess I could build a website, but haven't yet. Anyway, if you are taking names, I'd be interested in buying some miles.

I seem to recall a few years back someone had this as an idea (create a company, buy the miles in the name of the company, and "award" the miles to the promotors). As I recall, the airlines they were interested in buying the miles from had a limit on the number of miles that could be given to any single "employee" or user account. The limit, although high, made this mechanism not useful for someone who wanted hundreds of thousands of miles. (As I recall, the limit was something like 100K miles per year.)

I was thinking at the time that there must be some way to do an exception (see Pudding Guy, etc.), and it may be that the airlines would permit such large transfers on a case-by-case basis. Whether a promotor could persuade them that simply using the miles to reward the promotors was something they should approve, however, seems problematic.

Or it may be that the annual limits are no longer applied.

Anyway, that looks like an avenue that merits exploring . . .

I'm in. I'll form the co and everything. We need someone at a big mile retailer to tell us how they do it and go past individual mileage caps (like smaller ftd, etc)

Pm to join mission!

And let's keep going here, I have more to report shortly.

It's strange that they would have this limit. I don't see why they would care where the miles go as long as they get the money for their miles. Also, Bankdirect doesn't seem to have a limit on the number of miles that can go to a single account. perhaps the answer would different for a different airline program.

With so many airline programs available, and with alliance partners improving the interchangeability, we should be able to find some.

I would be in for 1-2 milllion depending on the alliance and cost per mile, of course.

Strange that they have this limit? They count, to some extent, on breakage. If a corporate travel department could buy 10M miles, there would be little breakage. But if a business gives out 100 miles to 100,000 customers, there would be a ton of breakage - a sizable percentage would expire unused.

I agree; BankDirect clearly doesn't have this limit. They must have negotiated a special contract, and for that, they likely didn't get rates as low as other partners.

It ain't breakage. The limits are way too high for that to be an issue. They still figure on some miles expiring unused, but not because of the limits.

The limit is mostly to keep people from buying miles to use for international F/J awards, where the fare is usually much higher than miles for an award would cost. The limits are usually too low for one such award, let alone two or more. It's not an absolute barrier, as has been posted on FT, but it prevents most of that sort of thing. (You can usually buy enough miles for a "saver" domestic U.S. round trip or its regional equivalent elsewhere, but if you're within the capacity controls on those awards, you can probably buy a ticket for the same or less - and earn miles, too.)