Hello Everyone,

First, a thanks to fellow members of this community that have helped with great information on MR's and other travel related stuff.

Second, I tried to search for the topic of this question on the threads earlier but I didn't have much success, so if this has already been discussed, please post the link for me to read...

Now, on to the question:

I have family members who do not plan on flying enough to ever get a reward ticket out of the airlines and are willing to give me their miles. I noticed that NWA, AA, and UA all have transfer programs available but costs ranging from $25 - $50 fee per person plus $.01 per mile, or it's tiered.

Regardless, I have been trying to figure out if it is actually worth transferring 5,000 miles with AA and/or 10,000 miles with NWA. I don't fly often enough on the 3 airlines listed above, so I need anywhere between 25,000 to 30,000 additional miles to reach my goal of Africa and Australia.

I'd appreciate any thoughts or views on the value/cost effectiveness of the transfer program and at what point do paying the fees make sense, if ever.

Thanks.

In general it is not worth paying to transfer miles - but there are exceptions.

How expensive are the tickets you are chasing? That is a significant consideration. If I was trying to get a $2000 ticket I would be willing to pay more to get there than for a $1000 ticket. Take Africa...I don't where you are trying to get to, but for Kenya and South Africa therie are often consolidator fares of $900-$1200 available. Some other African countries never price below $2000.

I recomend trying to find other ways to earn the miles you need other than flying. Can you sign up for credit cards? Change your cell phone company? Etc....

Whatever you do, don't use points.com

Unless you want to convert 5,000 miles into 127

Your best bet is to get the miles through a partner.

There are many sites that tell you how, here is a compilation on some of them

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=270587

Good Luck

I've signed up with some credit cards (I tried for 20K UA M+ and 15K AAdvantage, plus opened 2 different brokerage account for 19K UA M+). So I'm closer to my 80K goal with United :-) Now I just hope UA doesn't go under and make those miles worthless... but I know there are lots of people here on FT that have MUCH more to lose :-(

Appreciate the info!

You could sign up for Amenti with UA - cost $295 for a 25,000 miles bonus.