UA miles to AA miles: any thoughts?
 

I've recently moving from UA to AA, yet have many miles left at UA. Is there any way to transfer some in AA-usable form. Of course, the problem is that if I use the UA miles for travel, I gain nothing on AA in terms of accumulating mileage for premier status (now I'm Platnium). Any thoughts?

Some hotel frequent guest programs will allow you to "launder" miles. I know Hilton Honors is one of them. The problem is the exchange rate isn't very favorable. I believe Hilton will double your UA miles when you turn them into points, but it's converting those points into AA miles that gets you--something like 5 points=1 mile, although I'm not 100% sure. I think Starwood may also allow some form of mile laundering, but I don't know the details. If I were you I'd probably just convert the miles to points and use them for HHonors rewards.

Hilton is the only way to get miles from UA to AA. You used to be able to go through Diners Club (losing 50% of the value, which is better than Hilton), but UA no longer allows transfers to DC.

Maybe, maybe not:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum70/HTML/000493.html

I think it would be foolish to even consider moving the miles around. While you point out that using the UA miles for travel will gain you "nothing on AA in terms of accumulating mileage for premier status", actually, even if you used AA miles for travel you would not gain anything on AA for premier status.

I think you gain quite a bit by having miles in two programs that are at award levels - if capacity controls hamper your use of miles in one program you may be surprised to find that miles in the other program are an easy solution. I'd forget the magical tricks - if you don't have a full mile for a full mile, i know I would not even think of trading acounts around.

The only times I've converted United miles were when there was no penalty to do so:
- UA->Diners->BA when miles converted 1 to 1 because of Diners double BA mile promotion.
- UA->Hilton double point promotion offered about 5 years ago.

Right now, you will incur a huge penalty for converting the miles (through Hilton). As Randy states, maintain both accounts and get added flexibility when you want to book award travel. The only downside is not being able to upgrade your AA paid flights using your UA miles.

Gotta agree with Randy and PG - having mileage at award levels in UA and AA is a particularly nice combo to have. You've got the whole world pretty much covered.

As an example, in Sept. and Oct. of this year, we are taking a month-long trip entirely using UA and AA awards. With only one or the other, we could not have made the trip happen with the availability, stopovers, and open jaws that we needed. (One of the cities in which we have a stopover is Chicago - that certainly helps in this case.)

I am NOT a United fan by any means (haven't bought a paid ticket since the summer from hell and have no plans to do so), but you can't beat their route structure as a complement to American's. For that reason, I keep the UA account active and continue to earn partner miles there, even though I don't fly UA.

Just to provide some specifics about the "laundering" through the HHonors program, here are the links:

http://www.hilton.com/en/hhonors/rew...change_1.jhtml

http://www.hilton.com/en/hhonors/rew...change_2.jhtml

The bottom line is, you would receive 2 HHonors points for each UA mile. (Transfers are done in increments of 5,000 miles.) Then, going from HHonors to AA, the exchange rate is 5 HHonors points = 1 AA mile, unless you exchange 50,000 points, for which you would get 12,000 AA miles.

So the BEST you could do would be 25,000 UA miles = 12,000 AA miles. Otherwise, it would be each 5,000 UA miles = 2,000 AA miles.


Kathy

I like to keep some orphan miles in different programs, usually just enough for a free trip. Should something come up they are there if I need them.

I wouldn't move them around, I'd use them where they were or through one of the partners like cruise4miles. Even if you pay for a coach ticket and use them to upgrade on United it's still a better thing then losing them. Remember, you can use the United miles on any of the Star carriers. As has already been pointed out, you don't get status for flights with miles.