Question about Trading Miles
 

I don't know if this is the correct forum for this, so please forgive me if it is not. I have 20k miles on America West and 9k miles on Continental. Not enough for a free ticket on either. Is there any way to swap these miles from one account to another? America West and Continental used to be partners but no more. I also have 40k miles on Northwest. America West is a partner with NWA anyway to combine those miles? Any help is greatly appreciated.

Generally speaking, the answer is no - airlines will not allow you to take miles from multiple airlines and combine them for a single ticket.

There are sometimes ways to transfer miles between airlines (usually through third parties such as Hilton HHonors), but those will also incur a significant loss. And in this instance, none of the mentioned airlines have Hilton transfers anymore.

Welcome to FT, by the way. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

Mike

The only way I can figure out how to get Continental miles into an America West account would be:

Continental --> Amtrak --> Midwest Miles --> Points.com --> America West

9000 Continental miles becomes 1318 America West miles. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/frown.gif

Actually, if you had a Diners Club card, you could do:

Continental --> Amtrak --> United --> Diners Club --> America West

This way you'll only suffer 50% devaluation. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

By the way, 20k America West miles used to be enough for a capacity controlled coach award ticket systemwide. Now it takes 15k miles for shorter flights and 25k for longer ones. See http://www.americawest.com/flightfun...eemchanges.htm

It shouldn't be hard to top off the HP account, though. The bonus miles on an America West Visa put you over the top.

Finally, while there isn't a way to directly combine your America West and Northwest miles, you can use America West miles to claim a flight on Northwest and you can use Northwest miles to claim a flight on America West. In other words, you can use miles from each of your accounts to claim award tickets on the very same flights. No reason to actually combine the miles into the same account to do so.