Illegal to sell, trade or barter? Naive
 

I don't want a zillion replies to this, but I had no idea it was "illegal" to sell or transfer my miles to someone else. I have hundreds of thousands of US miles, & wanted to do some swapping for rooms or other travel useful things. Is this wrong? I don't want to lose my miles or account doing something wrong, and need to know the real deal on the subject. Thanks for your help.

Some airlines allow you to transfer miles, for example on United you can transfer for a penny a mile plus a $25 fee up to 60,000 miles.

Others don't. All depends.

This topic has already been discussed in at least a hundred threads, so next time please look around a bit before posting (For instance, on the first page of MilesBuzz is a topic called Warning/Confession: I was caught selling miles! This thread goes over the details).
Anyways, yes it is against USAir's rules, and it more than likely will be against whatever company's rules for which you trade the miles. However, since you are allowed to purchase tickets with miles for friends, the chance of you getting caught is very small unless your "friend" is stupid/sadistic. Personally, I'd recommend offering a trade on Coupon Connection, because I think its very low risk. Lastly, even if you don't mean it to be, I think you should edit out the details of your potential trade so that no one construes this post as an advertisement for your trade.

It isn't illegal anywhere that I know of.

Whether it is "wrong" is opinion.

It definitely is against the terms and conditions of the FF programs.

Trading certificates/miles in Coupon Connection is no more or less right or wrong than selling them on eBay.

It's not illegal.

It is against the rules of most (if not all) airlines. Violate those rules and you could lose all the miles, your elite status, everything.

It is illegal in some jurisdictions, such as California, to use or attempt to use a ticket for passage in violation of its terms and conditions. Since selling or bartering FF awards violates their terms and conditions, using such a ticket is in fact illegal - not just a violation of program rules.

The violation in this case is committed by the person who uses, or tries to use, the ticket. It is not illegal per se to sell the ticket or the miles.

As far as I know, nobody has ever tried to enforce such a law in the context of sold FF awards, but there's always a first time - especially if an airline gets the idea that a well-publicized court case might be a more effective deterrent to this sort of activity than simply confiscating someone's miles.

(Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, and this is all JMHO.)

An attempted enforcement of that California law is the last thing the airlines want.

Right now, the legal status of a frequent flyer mile is very vague. Airlines like that because they can set terms and conditions however they like, they can change the programs at any time without grandfathering earned miles, and they can sell miles to third parties for whatever they like while recording a very small offsetting liability for the outstanding miles on the books. While customers don't like the program changes, we do benefit from this vague legal nature of FF miles by the fact that the IRS basically leaves us alone with our FF miles.

If states start trying to prosecute dealers of FF miles, the legal nature of the miles will take on structure. Will a court author a decision based on the miles as currency? Will a court rule that they are coupons of some sort? Will they uphold a defendant's right to do whatever he/she wants with the miles? Who knows...

The bottom line is that the airlines don't want high-profile cases involving miles. Not if it means that the SEC, IRS, and others start reading judges' decisions, forming committees, and talking about FF miles. The status quo is just too darned sweet for everyone involved - except the black market dealers of FF miles.

While it is against most airlines rules to sell or barter miles, it is not in violation to give tickets, rooms, etc. away.

In my opinion this would mean there shouldn't be a problem with giving a tix to someone you know well to be a generous person and is likely to respond graciously with a gift of tix or rooms etc. for you :-)

Aaahhh...the old White Envelope trick. A generous soul once gave me two free Wrigley Field bleacher seats because I was kind enough to buy his $100 white envelope.

It doesn't change the nature of the transaction. It's still selling/bartering. (In the case of my bleacher seats, the deal was just as illegal as if the White Envelope language hadn't been there. But what the hell...I got to see Kerry Wood hit a home run and win the game. Pretty cool.)

It all gets back to 'substance over form'.

It may or may not be criminally illegal (which is the way many non-lawyers consider the term, that is, subjecting an offender to prosecution and possible jail), but it most definitely is a violations of the Terms and Conditions of most or all frequent flyer programs, to which you agreed by participating.

Thus, it is a breach of contract, or civilly illegal, if you will. Remedies by the carrier could include seizure of the ticket, charging the passenger the full fare, confiscation of all frequent flyer miles, expulsion from the frequent flyer program, monetary damages, and possibly expulsion from using that airline in the future.

I suggest we continue the discussion on illegality in the primary active thread on this topic.

Warning/Confession: I was caught selling miles!
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum1/HTML/008571.html

As to how far an airline can actually go, including whether its common carrier status limits the ability to bar an offender from future travel, there is still a fairly current ongoing discussion in this forum.

US Airways bans writer, confiscates miles after negative column
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum.../009531-6.html