With a shaky United Air and American Airlines holding a pile of my FF points I'm wondering if there's any way those points can be 'moved' to some other plan for a while without huge penalties.

I'm in Canada. The government supported Air Canada is a 'partner' of UA so there might (?) be a switch potential there from UA to AC's Aeroplan.

But perhaps some of you are already investigating what to do to protect your FF miles and could offer suggestions?

Switching to another program almost always involves significant penalties. Even in partner arrangements, you typically can't call Airline A and say "I'd like my miles to be moved over to an Airline B" account.

I think there are companies that will effectively write an insurance policy on FF miles. I saw something about this when US went bankrupt earlier this year. I don't know anything about the companies or whether they are a good deal.

The way I've been "protecting" my miles: I've been redeeming UA and US miles for awards whenever I can, and only accumulating in American Airlines and, to a lesser extent, Delta. (I'm taking a gamble on the relative financial strength of AMR as opposed to UAL or U; I realize this is still a risk.) For me, this has meant taking a couple of international business-class vacations, which is what I always wanted from the miles to begin with.

There is no practical way to move your miles from one program to another. It can be done via an intermediary like Hilton but the conversion rates are so severe that it's not practical. Since the USA economy is very dependent on our transportation infrastructure, it is highly unlikely that "Uncle Sam" would standby to watch the world's two largest airlines AA and UA, go out of business.

The other alternative is to purchase insurance from "Inside Flyer".

Here's where to find info on Award Guard.

Randy made some comments here on AwardGuard:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum1/HTML/005223.html

How do you protect your FF miles?

Spend 'em. No worries.

Transfer them to Hilton...

How do you protect your FF miles?

Sincere and Frequent Prayer.....

How do you protect your FF miles?

I use them.

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The Personal Travel Experience of Gary Steiger - including how to get free frequent flyer miles on the web.

I've transferred UA miles to a program that actually allows you to use/give away/sell them, Southwest. Diners Club is running a great SW promo right now:

24,000 UA miles = 24,000 Diners Club points = 16 Rapid Rewards credits = 1 free ticket, good anytime on any flight with an open seat

I'll take that over a 25,000 mile award that is offered for one middle seat every day on a 6 am flight if you have status.

If either or both of them went under, there would be others to take their place in the domestic marketplace. It's scary to think that the DC idiots would perpetually bail out the industry. An airline, even in today's climate, can make a profit. If you don't, it's nobody's fault but "your" own (management, unions, etc). United and it's "employee owners" were in deep !@#$ before 9-11. To paraphrase from an article on CNBC.com, the only real difference between what has happened at United and the scandals rocking Wallstreet is that it was legal at United. The "owners" made sure that they had lucrative contracts while the run-of-the-mill shareholder has been left swinging in the wind.

Howdy,

Since cactuspete and others have echo'd what I'm heading to say - feel free to skip me if ya like.

I personally enjoy using my miles for the more expensive tickets, for example - given the opportunity to use 200k miles for 4 tickets in F to HNL - I jumped at the chance (this includes a few days in LAX, a few in HNL and a week in KOA). The way I figure it, I got over .06 a mile in value.

My advice, instead of worrying about how to hold on to them is to use them. (Now, if you are one of those who wants to 'bank' your miles for the future - I say spend 'em now and throw the $$$ the tickets would cost into the bank).

Just my two cents.

Keep the faith,

Pakse