Hey all,

New here and this is my first post. Just wondering what the best method would be to consolidate accrued miles on various airline programs into one. During this year alone i have the following:

AA: 17.8K
BA: 29.8K
Marco Polo (Cathay): 1.9K
Virgin Flying Club: 17.8K
Mabuhay Miles: 3K
KrisFlyer: 28.5K


I would like to consolidate as many miles as possible in my KrisFlyer (Star Alliance) and my Marco Polo (OneWorld) as I would like to hit the Gold tiers. So far, after 2 days of reading up on methods on how to achieve this, the only possibilities i could find are: HH, Dining Club, points.com... I can move my AA miles to MarcoPolo at 1:3 ratio via points.com, but I can't seem to find anyway of getting my BA miles in except through HH which I believe is 1:10..

Any help on what exchange methods I can look into would be appreciated. Also, I don't mind signing up for new services despite any fees, etc..


Thanks,

Chris

Welcome to FlyerTalk. In general, laundering points through one of the hotel schemes is the only way to move them from one airline to another, albeit at a large devaluation. Have a look at this website which will guide you to the best way.

However, there seems to be a deeper misconception on your part about how the elite (i.e. Gold) levels work. They are based not on the number of points in your account, nor even on the number of points you earn, but on the number of points or credits you earn actually flying in a given year (or two or three, depending on the scheme). Transferring points may give you enough to book free tickets, but will never give you Gold status, for that you will have to fly.

If you earned all those miles flying (as opposed to with credit cards and such), and you repeat those flights next year, you may have enough to qualify for the lowest level of elite status, depending on your actual flights and classes. Go read a bunch of posts in the forum dedicated to your chosen scheme (Cathay) and learn enough to go back and see if this year's flight activity could have given you elite status had you earned Cathay miles for all those AA and BA flights.

Good Luck,

Michael

You have to decide from here on in, which airline alliance you would like to stick with and earn your miles there.

MPC is one of the hardest to get elite levels (ie their GOLD level, Oneworld Sapphire effectively requires you to fly 90K in a year if you have no status with them) Whereas if banked on AA's programme, you'd only need 100K to earn Exec Platinum status, their highest level in Oneworld Emerald.

Alternatively you may opt for AA's Platinum Challenge where you may earn mid level Platinum status by short cuts. You'd only need to fly about 20K miles to get to that level instead of the required 50K. But still you need to FLY to get that. More information may be found on AA's forum. Do a search under "Platinum Challenge".

All my miles (over 100K) spread across those 5 airlines have been earned 100% by flying... ie, my BA miles at 29K or whatever were all earned on flights with BA. As they are expiring in Feb. 2006, and since I'll probably never fly with them during that period, is it possible to transfer those miles through some intermediary into let's say my AA or CX account to help get to elite status? I'm just confused on the detials of that, as all my miles aren't from AMEX MP, etc.. On that note, just to confirm, if I convert 200K MP into 200K miles on AA, that won't get me any status right? Thank you all for your help...

Transferring miles won't get you any status. You have to actually fly those miles on the individual airline you're chasing status on. Say you flew 20,000 miles on BA and then found some great way to transfer those to AA at 1 to 1. You'd end up with 20,000 more miles in your AA account, but that would only be useful as mileage you could put towards awards. You would not gain anything in terms of status with AA.

With one sort-of exception--in the case of AA, when you've earned one million miles since opening the account, you're given lifetime Gold status. When you've earned two million miles lifetime, you're given lifetime Platinum status. With AA, all miles that enter your account count towards this, including any that you might transfer in from outside sources. But I believe this is unique to AA, and most of the time, in the case of other airlines, even if they may have milestones at which you're given a certain status for life, that counter is based on flown miles only and not things like credit cards miles or transferred miles.

Hope that clears things up for you.

That's not really true. If you had originally quoted your AA number when flying on those BA flights then they would have counted towards AA status (assuming they were of a mileage earning subclass). The thing you cannot ever do is earn status by transferring miles into an account (with the sole exception of AA lifetime status, as mentioned).

At the end of the day, I think it really comes down to where you are based and what routes you fly. Always making a connection just to consolidate FF points, I suspect would get quite old.

I'm currently based in HK, but not sure for how long, so do not personally see the value in MPC, but Oneworld carriers have met 90% of my travel needs this year. The US based programs tend to be the most generous (tier bonus'), and Cathay treats OneWorld elites exceptionally well, so for me AAdvantage is the clear choice as I get the best of both worlds.
The only downside is as christep mentions:

You do have to be vigiliant about fare class's if you are flying in economy, as generally each partner airline has it's own rules. So that said, while I am not in the MPC, I do have an asiamiles number. If I want to book a cheap Cathay flight, I put my AA number in the booking so that I can have lounge access and a shot at an op up (surprisingly common for elites on Cathay), and about 30 minutes prior to departure switch it to my Asiamiles number. Again for me, the best of all worlds.

The funny thing is that my initial qualification for AA gold was on CX, AA plat on CX, and next week EXP qualification will be on a CX flight as well.