I have a flight booked from PHL-HNL on UNITED. I am currently not a member of United's airline mile club. I am a member of USairways, but only have approx. 10,000 miles. My question is, should I earn the miles on USairways, or on United with the idea of transferring them to HiltonHHonors. Hilton is my main hotel club. Thank-you for your help. I am still a rookie at this.

How much more travel will you have this year? And how many status miles do you have on US?

If you are after status miles and Silver Preferred on US, then you want to post these Hawaii miles to your US account.

Remember that United Miles do't count for status on US until Jan 1, 2003.

I am in the same situation, complicated by the fact that US doesn't serve my home airport.

I'm hoping against hope that US might join HHonors exchange. Less likely yet, US and UA could have a cross program miles transfer promo.

Meanwhile you can build up your US balance with credit card, long distance, and other non-flight bonuses. For ideas, see the US forum, Gary Steiger's website, Smarter Living.com, and, of course, USAir's website.

Perhaps these bonuses, with or without some UA flight miles, would be enough to put you (or me) over the top at US. It's nice that US is now redeemable at UA, especially with no US at my airport. After we redeem our US miles, all future US flights can credit to UA.

Finally, if your primary interest is maximum HHonors points, there is an easy way to get a premium exchange rate when flying UA. E-mail me for details.

[This message has been edited by Rut Dog (edited 11-02-2002).]

I did a little research, since I needed to for myself anyway:

10,000 current balance
_9,820 RT PHL/HNL
_3,000 MCI sign up bonus (alternate plan here)
___500 US e-statements
23,220 Sub Total

So far, you haven't spent any extra money other than two months of MCI service charges. But you still need 1,780 miles to get to 25,000.

$178 at idine restaurants = 1,780 miles
4 hotel stays = 2,000 miles
$50 annual fee on basic credit card = 3,000

My hunch would be you can slam dunk the idine the first night in Honolulu.

[This message has been edited by Rut Dog (edited 11-02-2002).]

Don't forget that a Fall/Winter award ticket on US costs only 20K miles , allows a stopover which UA doesn't, but requires a Saturday- night stay .
Even better, go for 30K for a US award ticket to Cancun or the Caribbean--some flights are nonstop from PHL .

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Play the travel game 3 vacations into the future!

US is getting heavy competition. There is an article in the Nov. 5 USAToday. I know United has its problems but it doesn't look good for US. I would redeem those miles ASAP.

Are you going this year or next year? If next year, take the miles in US (when they'll count towards status), if this year, take them in UA and make sure to sign up for all the UA promos before your flight (better to wait until close to your flight to make sure you get all the then current promos) using the UA Promo Tool.

This is based on my personal preference to always take miles in their native program where they'll count towards elite status and lifetime status and will usually be maximized because of promos.

Off-peak awards (winter) are 20k on US, and they have specials every month if you get EStatements for 15k, for instance this month it's BOS and IAH from any US destination for 15k miles (see this page).

I would probably want to minimize my exposure to U's financial situation by taking the miles as UA miles. Not that UAL is a shining example of financial stability, but if I had to bet on ONE of these companies lasting a few more years, I'd bet on UAL.

I have 180,000 US miles. I'm not too stressed about it because I pretty much wrote them off as goners they day U dropped off the big board. If I can get 'em out through the UA partnership, that'll be a wonderful bonus to me. However, I'm not flying another US segment or attempting to earn another US mile.

If you don't think you're going to get that many miles, I'd pick UA. UA offers a transfer to Diners Club if you need to empty out orphan miles.

And since I live in neither a UA or US town, I just transferred 50,000 UA miles to 50,000 DC points to 2 Southwest Rapid Rewards tickets with DC's current promotion, and with the companion pass, converted it to 4 unrestricted round-trip tickets.