kats

I am concerned about T&C saying "Only the first 50,000 miles purchased for each of the buy, share or gift miles services will qualify for the Double Miles Bonus."

Does this not mean only the first 50k will qualify for the bonus even for sharing miles? I am thinking of transferring out my 200,000 miles to 4 recipients, 50K each to make the total 400K. Has anybody actually received the bonus on multiple accounts from one sender?

yanxfann

This promo gave us the unexpected opportunity to get rid of approx 25K miles that until now we'd considered to be essentially "dead". Thru the years we'd tried numerous times to redeem them for a free coach domestic R/T but had never found availability for our desired dates. By chance the miles were due to expire by the end of the month and I was preparing to buy an unneeded iTune from the Dividend Miles Shopping Mall just to keep them alive for a few more years, however the current Share Miles bonus promo gave us the opportunity to transfer them to a longtime business associate who made us an offer we couldn't refuse, after fees we ended up with items in return with a value of almost 1.5 cent/mile.

If you too have USAirways miles that you doubt you'll ever be able to redeem you might want to consider posting them on the Coupon Connection as there may be people looking for Share Miles.

jghassell

I just "shared" 21,000 miles from my wife, who manages to accumulate about 500 miles per year, with myself. 42,000 miles for $255 isn't a bad deal either--not the best, but then again it rescues some orphaned miles and unlocks some partner awards when combined with my miles. ^

sfernando

My wife, brother and I recently did a round robin of buying and sharing miles. Great deal, IMHO. Haven't read through all the dozens of preceding posts so bear with me if what I'm reporting was repeated somewhere along the way but here's what I found in terms of limits on the bonus classes:

Each account can only get up to 50,000 bonus miles for EACH of buy, gift and share transactions no matter the source. This is of particular relevance to sharing, which is the cheapest and therefore most attractive source for procuring bonus miles.

In our case, my brother shared 50,000 of his miles (plus 50,000 bonus miles) to my wife, leaving her with 150,000 miles total. I then tried to share an additional 5,000 miles from my account to hers so her account would have 160,000 miles, sufficient for a F South Asia/North Asia award. No luck. I would have been able to share my miles at $0.01 per mile, but without additional bonuses because her account had already received 50,000 share bonus miles from whichever source and therefore was capped in that category.

Without that limitation, I suppose a massive free-for-all would have resulted. We'd certainly have done another round among ourselves in a heartbeat to add 100K miles per account at $567.50 per head.

AZ Travels the World

Here's an even better deal if you need a few more. . .

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/us-ai...day-bonus.html

nissan motor

Does this work?

Starting with three account. All of them have 0 miles.

A buys 50k and gets 100k

A shares 50k to B
- A has 50k left
- B has 50+50 = 100k

A shares 50k to C
- A has 0 left
- C has 50+50 = 100k

sfernando

Yes it should. Cost will be $1373.50 + 567.50 + 567.50 = $2508.50, which comes to $0.0125 per mile for 200,000 miles gained. We did something similar, except we had a number of miles in each account to begin with.

frugaltravel

Hi, I'm a newbie here. My husband and I plan to go to South East Asia next year (Singapore). If we were to buy and share miles (total 80000 miles each), our total costs come up to $2,055 (including taxes and processing fees). So, total cost per person is $1,027.50. This doesn't include the booking fees yet. The US award dept told me that we would fly with Singapore Airlines. Is it worthed to pay $1,027.50 plus booking fees to go to Singapore from DFW with SQ, provided sometimes SQ (Singapore Airlines) has promotions with low prices?

vysean

I think there may be a couple of issues. One, what class of service do you intend to fly in (coach, business, or first)? Second, how many miles do you already have? Third, I would be extremely surprised if you are able to book any award on Singapore Airlines, given all aircraft flying to the US are blocked from redemption in anything but coach IME.

That said, $1k to get to southeast Asia in business or first class would be a bargain. Just be sure to put the flights on hold (confirm availability) and buy miles the same day. Your plan can become problematic if you buy the miles with the intent to redeem only to find nothing available for redemption - avoid the disappointment at the outset.

ramolnar

I would say no, but it might depend on when you want to go, and where you're coming from. 80,000 miles is the economy level to Southeast Asia, so I'm assuming the poster was thinking about coach.

I just pulled up some fares from San Francisco. For April 2010, economy fares are about $1000. In early June, in the $1200 range. In late June, the high summer period, $1500 or so. You then have to add the price of getting to San Francisco, or some other start point. That depends on the place; SDF (Louisville) for me adds about $250 to that. In June or July, it would cost me $1800 total.

There's no sale right now. As you said, if you wait for a sale, that could be lower. $1000 to Southeast Asia in economy is not a big bargain.

If your credit is very good, you could buy the miles for less. If you can spend $2000 within 3 months, the British Airways Visa gives you 100,000 miles for an annual fee of $75. I don't know the partner, but that's enough to get there.
If you want US Air miles, their credit card offers 25,000 for an annual fee of $79.

frugaltravel

Thanks for the prompt response! It's economy class. I don't have any miles, nor does my husband. I called the US Award dept and asked for the quote, they gave me 80000 miles per person with Singapore Airlines. I'm not sure how many miles required to fly to Singapore on business class. I haven't checked with them because our intention initially to get economy class.

frugaltravel

Thanks for the prompt response! We will fly in the month of July which I think it's a peak season. And I noticed that whenever SQ has promotions, it's almost always from SFO, LAX or IAH, never from my local airport, which is DFW, so I still need to pay the costs of flying to either one of these airports.

We both applied for BA cards and both of us got approved. But the miles needed to fly to Singapore is 120000 miles. I don't think we could spend $28,800 more to achieve the 40,000 miles needed for both of us. I think we would use these 100000 miles to travel to Europe.

Thanks for the idea on US Air miles for 25,000 miles, we'll have to think about it as we recently opened BA cards for both of us and other bank promotions (such as reward checking account & ING BF). We don't want to hurt our credit scores that much as we're looking to refinance our primary residence soon.

vysean

You're quite welcome, although you won't like what I have to say next...

I would not buy miles to do this in economy - especially at the cost you're looking at. Either work this promotion and/or another one to get you the necessary miles for business or first, or just buy a revenue ticket.

For what it's worth, I would suggest considering a flight to HKG in business class (90k miles - only 10k more than you are planning on now) and then a cheap revenue ticket to SIN from there ($200 return all-in in June 2010). It would cost 120k miles to fly to Singapore from the US in business class using US Airways miles. The advantage to this plan is that you can spend as much or as little time as you want in both Singapore and Hong Kong, the longest flights are in business class, and you're only spending an extra $200 and 10k miles.

There are a couple of cheap ways to accumulate miles - perhaps even cheaper than buying them outright. The 250% holiday promo is one, although you'll have to wait until 1 March for the miles to hit your account, and the promo for new members to fly 8 segments and get 25k miles is another. Another option would be to transfer hotel points to US Airways if you have an abundance of points and no need for them at the hotel chain. Finally, there are sometimes good promotions with hotels (only makes sense if you intend to stay anyway from a financial perspective) and rental cars (can sometimes make sense to rent even if you don't need the car at all given the miles offered).

Let us know what you decide you want to do and we'll try to help you do it as frugally as possible...

nissan motor

No business or first from Europe to USA available?

No business or first from Europe to Asia available?

Hakluyt

Hi Friends,
I am awed at all the possibilities listed here by sharing, buying and gifting US Air miles. On my own, I would never have come up with all the angles.
Since we are frugal travelers, I attempted to get a saver award to Europe for early next year. Tried to book in November, hoping for a saver award at 50,000 miles. This was not possible.
Now to the question of buying and sharing miles.

Account A has 48,000 miles
account B has 60,000 miles

A buys 40,000 + 40,000 = 128,000 miles at $ 460
A transfers 20,000 + 20,000 bonus to B = 100,000 at $ 245 total $ 705.

I think this is probably the cheapest way. Or is it? Need advice, thanks.