Consolidating Miles
 

I'm a real novice at this - how do I consolidate miles from various programs to use for trans Atlantic travel? My wife and I are planning a trip to Europe in the Fall and would love to utilize miles to help pay for and/or upgrade us on our flight.

Pretty much the only way to use the miles are on the airlines you earned them on. The one exception is if you have CSP points which you can transfer to some airlines. Also some Hotel points can be transferred to certain airlines. Airlines really don't want to help out their competiors. Good luck with your trip and enjoy.

Unfortunately, it's also very difficult to upgrade with points. Doing so usually requires buying a coach fare much more expensive than the least costly ones.

Sometimes you can use points from different airlines on the same flight if the carriers are part of the same alliance. For example, if you had enough points on United for one ticket and on USAir for another, you might be able to book two seats on United - or USAir - or Air Canada - or Lufthansa.

Points.com allows you to exchange points between some programs, but the transfer ratios are awful. Don't even think about it.

Thanks
 

I was afraid as much- either they charge you an arm and a leg to switch or an arm and a leg to buy additional - either way you end up minus an arm and leg so they should give you a fuel credit for your weight loss!:p

It might be possible for both you and your wife to gain a significant amount of miles (40,000--50,000) fairly quickly through credit card offers connected to major carriers such as AA, DL or UA. If you have some miles in one or more of these programs to begin with, you might be able to increase your balances to the 60,000 normally needed for a RT trip to Europe. In addition, AA offers such trips for 40,000 in the off-season, which includes some Fall travel.

Welcome to Flyertalk. You will receive much better answers if you list the program balances that you hold, and the route you hope to fly. There are important exceptions to every generalization. For example, many programs allow one-way redemptions for half the miles of a round trip, this makes it possible to use one airline eastbound and the other for the return. Likewise, most airlines belong to one of three alliances and offer travel on any airline in the same alliance. This means you may be able to redeem for two tickets on the same flight through two separate programs.

Can you share with us your mileage balances?

Many airlines now allow one-way awards so you could book half of your trip on one airline and the other half elsewhere.

BTW, you might want to change the title of your thread to something more descriptive of your request to get a little more traffic. :)

Only a moderator can change the Title of a thread, but you are correct that a non-descriptive title is a poor idea -and- is discussed in the Guidelines that all new members should read:

http://www.flyertalk.com/help/rules.php#q63

Hedgepop should click the triangular icon in the lower left corner of the first post and ask the moderator to change the title.

I've just attempted to give a more descriptive title.

Welcome to FlyerTalk, hedgepop.

Thanks for all the suggestions and guidance for utilizing the forum better.
The assorted milage that I have is as follows:

25,898 miles with Alaska
17,301 with Delta
33,257 with Continental/United
2,644 with American

My wife has:

2,100 with Alaska
19,165 with Continental/United

I have no experience using miles for award flight other than directly with the associated airline. This is all unchartered territory for me...

And thanks SanDiego1K for adding a logical title to my question!

the airline sites will have a chart showing the mi needed for an award....

the amount varies by time of the year....aa to europe is 20 k each way starting oct 15.....30 k before...so in sept, y'all need 60k each

Newbie: Consolidating Miles
 

Greetings all

I am a newbie here on these forums. Over the past year, I have signed up for several credit cards, received bonus miles on various airlines (different world alliances). I checked my total points and it looks like I have a combined total of roughly 375,000 through Delta, United, British Airways, Frontier, Southwest, US Airways and I think a few others.

Now (remember, Im a newbie here). how would I be able to consolidate these miles as much as possible? I understand there is a site called Points.com, but I was looking at their transfer rates and I was rather appalled at the transfer rates. Is there a way to transfer the miles through a reward point system like Hilton or some other 3rd party in which I can redeem as much as possible?

thanks in advance and I am looking forward to hearing answers from the experts.

If this thread needs to be moved to another section... thats cool too :)

--Laura

Congratulations on a great start! There really doesn't exist what you're looking for, a way to consolidate miles and points across programs without taking a substantial hit in value. That would defeat the underlying purpose of loyalty programs. One thing you can do is hold onto those points that are flexible, like UR and MR, until needed, then transfer them to the program you want to redeem with, in effect consolidating those points. Also, with those airlines that offer one-way options, you can in effect consolidate miles from two programs into one trip by using one redemption outbound and another inbound.

Moderator action
 

jarofjam's question has been appended to a similar discussion from last month. While the specifics of each situation are different, the general concepts are the same and reading the earlier posts should prove helpful.

I understand that you came here hoping to find a way to consolidate points, and then discovered that it's not really possible. However, if you would like useful advice about the best way to use your points, it would be helpful if you added some information like:

Where you live (home airport)
What your travel goals are (a few domestic trips, business class overseas with your significant other, around-the-world in First) and your time frame
Whether you are looking for travel for one person or two, and whether they can get credit card signup bonuses, and what credit cards you've already signed up for in the past year or two.
About how many miles you can accrue annually by flying and by spending on credit cards, excluding bonuses.
Whether you have a really cute sister who'd like to go to Vegas with me (just kidding).

The other advice given, about using points for one-way trips, is very good, and about Chase and Amex points. These points are great because you can hold them until you find the award ticket you want; the only downside is that to keep them active, you often have to have a credit card that has a fee. (Note, both Chase and Amex have only one kind of point, but the redemption options vary with the card. So if you had, say, 100,000 Chase points that you didn't plan to use for a while, you could open a free Freedom card, then reopen a Sapphire Preferred when you were ready to transfer them to a travel partner.)

You also have to pay attention to redemption options. For example, American Airlines (good news) has 40,000 mile round-trip awards to Europe in the off-season (October 15 to May 15), but (bad news) you may have some occasions where your only travel option is flying British Airways through London, which can have surcharges so high that you'll wonder what the term "award ticket" means. Delta is notorious for being difficult to book award tickets at the lowest point levels.

The more focused you are, the more people can help you.

Does anyone know which airlines offer one way redemptions? (For half the miles I mean; you can probably do a one way on any of them and just throw away the second half of the ticket). The last time I checked it seemed like American was the only one, but I could have missed something. We have quite a collection of miles on most of the airlines, but usually they're such a pain in the neck to use we just keep accumulating. Have booked a few award flights on USAir, United, and American.

See post #2 in this thread for a link to several previous discussions:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/miles...ay-awards.html