How do i purchase air miles
 

Hello All,

I have been reading some of your posts on flyer talk for the past few weeks now and decided now to write my first post...

I dont travel much for business so do not get the opportunity to collect miles. I do collect Membership Rewards points on my AMEX card and almost have enough points for a business class ticket but still require more points.

I was wondering if there exists an agency that actually specialize in selling various FFP air miles so that i can shift my AMEX MR points to an FFP along with the ones that i purchase? (if that is possible):confused:.

Welcome to FlyerTalk, bananapointjunkie!

Yes, there are many ways to buy points. So far as I know, every airline allows you to buy miles; just check their website. Amex MR points can be transferred to a few airlines. You can just transfer to the airline you want, and then buy miles to "top off" your account.

But make sure you actually need to. For example, you can transfer your American Express Membership Rewards points to Delta, often with a 50% bonus. So if you had, say, 100,000 MR points, you could transfer to Delta for 150k points, which should be more than enough for a business class ticket to wherever you want to go. This is typically a "limited time" promotion, but it rolls around every couple of months. So if you don't need miles immediately, consider waiting fora Delta promotion.

How many is that exactly? Are you looking at pay with points or are you considering transferng to one of MR's partners and booking from there? (Transfering to a partner and booking an award is almost certainly a better deal.)

Absent an especially good sale, most opportunities to purchase miles are woefully overpriced.

Welcome to Flyertalk bananapointjunkie!

Instead of buying miles look across this thread, use the search button, to find all types of bonus offers.

They range from Credit Cards to Brokerage Accounts and Netflix to e-shopping portals.

Much more affordable than the going rate of a direct miles purchase.

This is right, although it really depends on how many points you need, on which airline, how many Amex MR points you have, and how you want to buy your tickets (pay with points vs. transfer to a partner). You won't get any information here that hasn't already been posted, but if you give more detail we can at least point you in the right direction.

Where are you hoping to go on a business class ticket? You may have enough MR points already. While most airlines charge around the same amount of miles for award tickets, there are some programs that are a much better value depending where you're traveling from/to. For instance, most airlines charge around 100,000 miles for a business class round trip award ticket from the US to Europe. However, ANA (a Star Alliance partner airline) has a distance-based award system. For roundtrip business class itineraries on any Star Alliance partner airline up to 7,000 miles, the cost of a business class rountrip ticket is only 63,000 miles. Up to 9,000 miles the cost is only 68,000 miles. So if you live on the east coast and want to travel in business class to London for example, this is a much better value for your points. You could get a roundtrip business class ticket from NYC or Boston to London for 63K miles or from Miami or Orlando for 68K. And I believe if you transfer your points to foreign carriers AMEX doesn't charge you an excise tax fee like they do for US carriers.

Welcome to Flyertalk.

If your American Express card is issued in the USA you can use the Points Advance feature to borrow Membership Rewards points that you have not yet earned. If you have a Green or Gold account you can borrow 15,000 points, if you have a Platinum or Centurion you can borrow 60,000. You have 12 months in which to earn sufficient points to repay the advance.

Alternately, American Express will sell you points at $25 per thousand. There is no place else that you can buy Membership Rewards points.

Membership Rewards is discussed here:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...p-rewards-410/

Back to your origninal question, most airlines frown on purchasing miles from companies that sell miles. Don't make the mistake of getting involved in any of these companies. Points.com however, is an accepted source of bartering miles among several programs.

Dear OP,

Appears you may be missing a big FT "secret"--you can get tons of miles via credit card app bonuses. No need to buy miles until you have maxed out on card apps--which may never happen.

Apply for Chase Sapphire Preferred RIGHT NOW and get 50K pts worth 50K UAL miles for $3K spend. Then do the same for the Chase Ink Bold for the same bonus ($5K spend on this one) and look at the various AA bonuses from Citibank.

Good luck!

While there are usually ways to buy points, it is often not a very good value. You will usually pay 2.5 to 3 cents per point. If you have 98,000 points and need 100,000 for an award, and don't want to go through the credit card routine or try to find something at the airline's "points mall" to buy, it can be very sensible to buy the missing points. As a rule though, you will rarely want to buy points just to turn them around for awards.

Though you're right (don't buy tickets from third parties), I think the OP's question was just inartfully phrased because of his lack of familiarity -- you don't need to buy miles "from companies" because you can get them from airlines directly. I think he just didn't know that.

In addition to being able to borrow MR points from Amex, you can purchase them outright, up to 500,000 MR points per year. The cost is $0.025 each. It would make sense to maximize your MR borrowing capacity as described above first, as the worst case is that in one year you'll have to buy miles at the same price to repay the points loan should your spending not cover it. But can often be the case that a MR points purchase makes sense, if you're just below the threshold of having enough miles to redeem for an award you really want.

thank you all for you replies - much appreciated!

while you can purchase part cash part points on airlines this is a more expensive option and thought if there is an alternative approach to purchasing points at a cheaper rate?

Wait for a sale. The only free airline points are those for sign up bonuses.
The rest of the points from your spend "cost" you 2c each in lost cash back.
Anytime ANY airline sells points for less than 2c, you can consider buying them IF you have a better value from the points than from buying the ticket.

IIRC NH charges YQ.