Marriott will also let you cpmbine, it a limited sort of way. Your spouse and you can combine up to whatever is needed to get an award. They mau actually go further than that, but that much I know is true.

I believe Hilton will also let you combine spousal accounts under certain circumstances, but the old mutual accounts are a thing of the past.

Hilton also lets you combine different accounts in the same name. Don't ask me how I know that. :)

Keeping miles alive
 

The simplest way to keep a frequent flyer account active is to just use one of their FF#s whenever you have a hotel stay. They don't care whose name is on the account; the mileage is credited by the frequent flyer account number.

My husband and I do this regularly, alternating accounts to make sure each one has some activity at least once every three years.

We rotate airline accounts with our Hilton HHonors "double dip" stays--the hotel credits go to my husband's HHonors account, and the mileage goes to "whomever".

We also elect to earn miles in our various frequent flyer programs with hotel chains where we don't stay often enough to make accumulating hotel credits worthwhile. We join every program we can, even if we don't think we'll ever stay there again.

Continental currently gives 250 miles for playing an online game about building a plane.

Delta had miles under Coke caps last year.

AA had kellogs. Now Dannon Water.


There are enough of these little promotions to keep the accounts alive

What online game? Do you happen to have a link to the game?

My reader writes:

Early this year, when the Delta Dash to the Gate game appeared, of course I got 10,000 SkyMiles each for myself, my wife, and my 3-year-old daughter. But at the time my wife was about 7 mos. pregnant, and I wanted to get 10,000 miles for my soon-to-be son, as well. So I tried to open a Skymiles account for him. Problem is, as MM has noted, you have to supply a name and a birth date. We had some ideas for a name, but had not settled finally on just one. But I nearly named my son that day for the sake of the 10,000 SkyMiles. The problem, though, came with the birth date. My wife was scheduled for a C-section, so I knew the birth date in advance (or I thought I did; in actuality he decided he wanted out before the doctors had planned). At any rate, I entered the name I had chosen that day, and the anticipated birth date, but the form would not accept birth dates in the future. So little Heldon (not his real name) does not yet have any SkyMiles.

I actually considered entering the date with a "typo" in the year. I figured I could enter 2004 and later claim it was early in the year so I hadn't gotten used to entering 2005 yet, or I could've entered 2000 and called that last 0 a finger slip. But I figured any problem correcting the date later could cost not only the 10,000 SkyMiles from the game, but any others he might have more legitimately earned in the intervening time. So I decided to hold off on creating his account and wait to see if I could snag a new member sign-up promotion for him later.

If this story sounds familiar, I told it earlier on FT, in TravelBuzz, under a topic called "What's the most outrageous thing you've done for miles" or something like that. I wonder if Delta would've been interested in a story for their inflight magazine: "I named my son for SkyMiles."

I love it. I would have risked it myself. It would not have hurt any other member directly... Sure, they could one day become more strict on policy, but over all, that's actually a good things for all of us: Think about it, if rules are carefully thought thru and promos are well managed and planned by marketers, then less error occurs all around at posting time! I am all for stricter policy within the world of mile gigs, but yeah, I am glad they many times make mistakes in my favor as well.

Anyway, speaking of combining things, my late father has 20k HH points and mom and I have a bunch as well. Hilton will not allow us to combine these in any way and trust me, we have periodically tried and tried again. They have essentially listed him as deceased and locked his account. It can be accessed and used by anyone with the acct number and pin, but only for 20k HH points, meaning you can basically get a cat2 room or something and that's about it.

The interesting thing is that for a while, after I called to tell them of his death, they had mistakenly listed me as deceased, and later, when I called back, they had to fix it. This mistake was something that did not bother me, but the CSR felt so bad about it that they made me gold and credited me with several thousand points at the time. So did I profit from my father's loss? Well, stranger things have happened in the name of miles & points.


:)MM

My dozens of inlaws abroad might as well be non-existent for several purposes. Out of sight, out of mind? :)

Diners Club works well for keeping points alive, except AA & BA.

Among others, I have some upstairs neighbors named the Pendeltons who have helped me gather tons of UAL milez and awardz, and somewhere--I cannot remember where--I have all the passwords to their Yahoo email accounts.

put it in the cookie jar!
;)MM

Use your child's Aeroplan card at Esso in Canada, 1pt/$3(CDN).

Buy a Continental Privilege Pack for your child, you can use the coupons while your child gets the miles. Limit of one booklet every 12 months.

Going back to the OPs question about keeping the accounts alive. People have tossed out some great ideas. I liked the idea of the hotel points. You could also do the occasional surveys that the airlines have for points. Anything to keep them alive.

Since the points are over three different airlines I would over the years try to bring each one up to 25k miles. This will give them three trips for their high school grad trip and college spring breaks.

After that concentrate on a single airline. If mom and/or dad have a favorite, go with that one. If not, bank the miles in one like AS. Over the years I have seen lots of people who have a prefered airline and then use AS as a catchall for other tickets. They have partners (including the ones in the OP) that fly almost everywhere. If you were trying for status and flying places other than the left coast you would go with a different airline, but since this is for the occasional flying kid it is no big deal.

One transcon pre year until 18 would give them about 90k miles or a business ticket to Europe.

http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/mess...d1=continental

continental.com/for/aeromatic

Thanks, Jerry.

Any idea how long it takes for the miles to post?

My sons are away on vacation, so I think I'll play the game for them. They would have liked it.

Hi, this thread is very interesting because I'm in a similar, but reversed situation (if you get what I mean).

When I was a kid my father enroled me in the TWA program and I earned fair few miles. Some were redeemed to get me cheap/free flights. Now I'm an adult and Daddy no longer taking me with him on business trips to the US I am now left with an AAdvantage account with a enough miles not to want to loose them, but not quite enough to do anything with them. I've never flown with AA, and in my current lifestyle unlikely too in the near future (I live in the UK).

I have managed to keep the account live with transferring Priority Club points from hotel stays, and last week my BA flight within Europe has now given me another 3 years.

Best way to redeem my AA miles is a topic for another thread......

flyingbee