Hello All!
Here is the situation. I have a friend I would like to take for free on a trip.
Here is the situation:
I have:
1) 30,000 miles on United
2) $300 travel voucher on United that I can issue in anyone's name
3) 35,000 miles on Continental, which I can also issue for self or another person.
4) Enough miles on America West for an upgrade
5) Enough miles on Delta for an upgrade, but close to domestic ticket.

We want to go out of the US. It takes 35,000 miles on both Continental,and I think United,to go to Central America or Mexico. My travel agent/friend suggests that I use the voucher and pay the difference, and fly my friend on my CO miles. He said that way I could get the miles for flying. We begged to differ here, as I explained to him, that once I had received a voucher from America West for $100, and was NOT allowed to collect any miles at all, despite I had paid $400 for the ticket.
I would not mind going somewhere else, maybe Europe, but Europe is 50,000 miles.
Any ideas on where to go or how to best use these miles and voucher?
Thanks in advance.
Beth

I would agree with the travel agent. If you want to go to Europe and do not mind going in the winter you could get a low fare and the $300 voucher could cover a majority of your ticket cost, and you would get miles for your trip, even though you used the voucher. Also if you have a PC and download the United connection software on your PC, and use it to book your reservation and then ticket it at a United ticketing office/airport you could get additional miles. Also you are very close to getting an off peak award to Europe with your Continental miles in the newly announced program, your best bet is to try to get another 5000 miles (MCI is currently offering 10,000 CO miles for switching). If nothing else you could transfer your Delta miles to Hilton, and then transfer from Hilton to Continental, but you lose a lot of miles in those transfers and I would not recommend it.

If it is a UA bump certificate it should be 4 $75 certificates, which adds some flexibility. These certificates -don't- stop you from getting miles. It isn't really clear--do you need to travel with this person, or can you split up? That adds some possibilities. If you don't, I'd get the add'l 5000 miles on UA somehow, book my friend on the free ticket, use the $300 for me and pay the difference and get the miles on UA

This is great feedback! Thanks all! My friend and I can fly different airlines and we originate from different cities. However, we would like to arrive on the same day, hopefully, within hours of each other. I hadnt considered using the UA voucher, and then getting the UA miles, thus we could both fly UA which gives us more options. Thanks!

Just another thought. You can purchase up to 20% of the miles that you need with CO. Sign up with MCI, then purchase the difference. You can fly your friend out of the country that way.

UA still requires 50K for Europe FF ticket. You would get the miles for your flight, but they are posted after the flight. So unless you get another 20K UA miles before your flights I do not see how you could get your friend a United FF ticket to Europe. Also as pointed by someone else, get the United paid ticket in your name since you have a fair amount of United FF miles, and get a FF ticket for your friend.

Buying FF miles from CO is expensive, consider alternatives like the CO executive pack if you can get one, or maybe a CO affiliated credit card which gives bonus miles for getting the card.