Where to dump random miles in Star Alliance
 

I'm specifically asking this in the Delta forum rather than Star Alliance because I want the opinion of Delta (and Skyteam) regulars.

I'm PM on DL and have been for the last 5 years. My domestic travel is almost exclusively via DL. I travel a lot to Europe (France mostly, Switzerland second, and others the rest) and South East Asia, so my international travel patterns are pretty well covered by Skyteam partners.

I have to fly Continental in a few weeks - no reasonable way to do the route on DL - and I'm trying to figure out in which program to dump those miles. I have an Asiana account from the days back when DL didn't have much codesharing in South East Asia, but not sure that makes sense anymore as DL are pretty well covered there since the merger. And whatever program I'm going to choose, I will not likely accrue enough for status in any given year. So essentially I'm looking for a program where I can stick miles when I have to fly Star Alliance members that might make sense if I get enough miles to be able to use them for a ticket given my typical flying patterns.

Right now it is a tossup between United or Swiss.

Thanks

If you'll be able to acrrue 5,000 miles on your trip, you might think about opening a onepass account then transfering to amtrak. Rail miles are pretty handy for NE corridor travel.

http://www.continental.com/web/en-us...sfer/rail.aspx

DL PM as well and Star collector. I switched to UA for a few months a few years ago, so I continue to credit Star miles to UA (via card and infrequent Star flying). Being NYC-based, UA makes at least as much sense as CO, as the programs will be merged shortly anyway. I plan to use my miles for Star Saver awards in F/J on SQ, LX, etc.

If you're going to fly *A, right now I would sign up for whatever program (UA or CO) has the better credit card offer & use that. Unfortunately, they're both Chase, and Chase seems to limit people to one new card per 6 months, so you can't do both.

Or you can gamble & get the CO card now, try for the UA card in 6 months, hoping that Chase isn't blocking new participation in both programs at that point..

Down the road it won't matter when all the accounts are merged.

AC is a pretty decent place, their requirements for *Silver and *Gold are much lower than UA and there is no *net blocking either.

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How many miles are we talking about? You could credit to aegean. 4000 miles to hit *s and 16000 for *g. *g gets you lounge access when traveling internationaly.

Look at agean. Low thresholds to get star silver (free bags on us star partners) and star gold (lounge access).

Don't forget that you can augment those orphan miles with partner miles from hotel/car rental etc. As well as dining program. I have over 16K on UA from the dining program this year, which will be used to UG a TATL flight at some point.

Trying to UG TATL on DL is always a stacked game of roulette, even with SWU's.

M&M's (LX) mileage chart is steeper than UA's for many awards (for instance: N. America to S Asia in F is 145K for UA, 180K for M&M). The one big advantage to M&M is they have access to SQ inventory the rest of *A does not, which might be useful for SE Asia travel.

I would actually dump the miles in US (in fact, they are my "*A place to dump miles", as I am similar to you: no real need to use *A except quite occasionally or for award travel, as my travel patterns are covered by other airlines). Award levels are better: North America-North Asia on Star Alliance (includes Japan and Hong Kong) is 90K in C, 120K in F, and can include a free stopover in Europe (which you can't do on UA, as they have maximum permitted miles rules) for an extra 10K in C, 5K in F (and sometimes US forgets to charge this).

In addition, US regularly runs 100% bonuses on purchased miles, meaning topping off an account for an award might only take a few hundred dollars, and regularly runs promotions that give cheap miles (like this months' Grand Slam).

The catch with US is that dealing with their customer service to get awards is painful (as many are fairly clueless on how to handle them). Once you get past that, though, I've heard quite good things about TG's BKK-CDG service in F (on leased 9W jets with F suites). I've also redeemed US miles for LX HKG-ZRH in F (as have others).

UA does have one-way awards (US does not) and some interesting partners (EK, QR). You might also try AC: I've heard good things about Aeroplan- similar flexibility in routing to US.

except miles expire after 12 months of inactivity (its not easy to stay active without flying outside of Canada)
and all miles expire 7 years from the date of earning, so no long term saving is possible.