Combining Aeropoint and United Miles?
 

I have ~25,000 points on a credit card that I can convert to aeropoint at one point per mile or convert to cash ($250).

I also have just under 25K miles on American and just over 60K miles on United. I'm trying to figure out the most efficient way to get the Aeropoint miles combined with my United or American miles.

Any tips?

Welcome to FT!
Afraid to say you can't combine UA and AC miles ... they are separate programs. And you can't combine AC and AA miles, again separate and distinct programs. There are a couple of less than optimal conversion methods that expensive in terms of losing a chunk of your miles.

Aeroplan, not Aeropoint
 

I got the plan name wrong, it is Aeroplan. Which is Air Canada's program (I was trying to figure out what you meant by "AC" ... I get it now.)

So even though both UA and AC are StarAlliance members I can't combine miles?

Correct. Alliance membership has nothing to do with being able to transfer miles between frequent flyer programs.

However, both American and United allow for one-way redemptions. That would allow you to "combine" in the sense of allowing you to use both sets of miles in one trip.

It's not exactly cheap, but you can also try points.com and post a swap offer with someone else. You have to pay a pretty steep fee, but if someone is looking for some Aeroplan miles and has some United miles to spare, then they will agree to swap with you.

I did it one time to liquidate some Skymiles that were all but useless to me, ended up getting 150% of my Skymiles back in AA miles which at the time were more useful and had to pay about $120 for the transaction, but that was far less than buying AA miles directly even during a promo.

I was also going to suggest Points.com. It will cost you some money and you will lose some points in the process but if you intend to drop one of those programmes and know that you'll not cumulate enough points for a full redemption then it's a solution.

I did that with my AsiaMiles miles... I only had 6000 miles, orphan miles. So I paid a bit and transferred them into another programme.

points.com is for the truly desperate.:p Currently, you can convert 3K Aeroplan miles to 3K UA miles for $60 fee. OP can convert 24K Aeroplan miles to 24K UA miles for $480 fee.:eek:

Why would you pay extra money to convert points, instead of redeeming one way tickets from different programs to make a full round trip? That is just a really dumb idea. There's no reason why you can't use American miles one way, United back.