Family Miles Management

Earning miles amongst family members is a wise idea but redeeming them effectively requires another level of management.

It’s always good to create airline membership accounts for all family members, ages two and older. Since you’re paying for a flight why not bank the miles, right? However, utilizing those dispersed miles is another story. Not all family members travel as frequently so your account balances will vary. In order to utilize all miles, across all family members, you have to focus on a holistic account management approach.

During our travel planning from Korea to New Zealand we searched high and low for award flights but consistently came up empty. Months of searching produced nothing until suddenly, a month and a half before our desired departure date, a fantastic award flight appeared on American Airlines. They had 4 business class flights from Seoul, Korea to Auckland, New Zealand, with a 3-hour layover in Hong Kong, for only 40,000 AA miles + $83/person. For a 15-hour flight that was an amazing deal, especially for the route because it was so rare to see.

For the four flights, we needed 160,000 AA miles and luckily I had 111,000 miles in my AA account and Kara had 60,000 miles in her account adding up to 171,000 AA miles. Plenty of miles to book four 40,000 AA mile award tickets right? WRONG.

One major hurdle was that American Airlines doesn’t allow household members to pool miles together. Therefore I was short 9,000 of the 120,000 AA miles I needed for three award tickets (Christopher, Elle, and myself) while Kara had 20,000 more miles than she needed for her 40,000 award ticket.

Well, then I could just transfer 9,000 miles from one of my credit cards to American Airlines for free and just bridge the gap right? WRONG. Unfortunately, the only credit card that offers a transfer to American Airlines is Bilt but I did not have that card. I was left with no free way to make the points work the way we needed to book those four tickets.

Therefore, I had to resort to one of three options provided by AA. I had to buy the miles, gift the miles, or transfer the miles. All of these options, unfortunately, came with a price tag which I’ll walk through below.

Buy the miles

All airlines will allow you to buy miles however it isn’t the most fiscally responsible thing to do. Rarely would I recommend buying miles because they are pretty costly compared to the actual value. From time to time, airlines will have bonus deals varying from 20-100% on top of your miles purchase but even with the bonus, it will most likely still be a disadvantage to you cost-wise. Therefore I would only recommend buying miles if that is your only option to bridge the miles gap to an award you want.

Now actually buying the miles is pretty straightforward. First, log onto your AA account and click on the “Buy Miles” link. Once you click on the link it’ll open a window that will allow you to enter the miles you’d like to purchase and if there is a bonus they’ll show you what it is. As you can see in the example below there is an increasing scale of bonus miles you can be awarded based on the number of total miles you are looking to purchase.

I’ve put in a sample of 10,000 miles to purchase and even with the 20% bonus the cost to purchase these miles is $301.00 USD. That’s basically 3 cents per mile that you’re purchasing which is double the value of an American Airlines mile, which is typically 1.5 cents of value. Therefore you can see that the value just isn’t there.

Here are a few other things to note about purchasing points:

• Prices will usually be in USD and transactions are not refundable or reversible.

• Typical processing time is instant but the site says it can take up to 8 hours. Our experience has always been instant.

• Offers for bonuses may differ for people so your mileage may vary.

• Purchased or transferred AA miles does not count toward an elite-status qualification or AAdvantage Million Miler status

(FYI - you’re only allowed to purchase in 1000-mile increments and starting with a minimum of 2000 miles and a maximum of 150,000 miles)

Gift the miles

The second option is to gift the miles from AA to someone’s account. This is the same as buying miles but just for someone else’s account.

The bonuses and prices are typically the same as buying so this also is not an option I would recommend due to the cost being much higher than the actual value of the miles you’ll be purchasing.

(FYI - same requirements of 1000 mile increments and starting with a minimum of 2000 miles and maximum of 150,000 miles)

Transfer the miles

The last option is to transfer the miles from one American Airlines account to another. As I mentioned earlier, some other airlines allow you to merge and compile miles together if you are from the same household. Airlines like Air Canada, British Airways, and many others (Non-US airlines, unfortunately) allow you to create household accounts and combine all your points to leverage together.

American Airlines only allows transfers between AA accounts and they come with an associated cost. As you can see in the example below transferring 10,000 miles cost $150 USD.

I was left having to pay to move 9,000 miles over from Kara’s account to mine. The only good part was that the cost of transferring the miles costs less than buying or gifting. This still ended up costing me $135 USD to make the transfer. This was a hard pill to swallow considering it was just moving miles we already had but unfortunately, there was no better option available. It was worth it because it allowed us to book the four business class tickets on Cathay Pacific through American’s website.

Flying business class on Cathay Pacific was really enjoyable. The airplanes were new, the seats were very roomy and comfortable, the amenities were high quality, and the staff was fantastic. The only thing that could’ve been improved in our opinion was the food as it wasn’t too tasty Here are a few pictures we took of our 15-hour flight:

Our plane

Business class lounge at Incheon Airport, Seoul Korea

Seats for the first leg from Seoul to Hong Kong

Entertainment system

Cathay Pacific Business Class Lounge in Hong Kong for our 3 hour layover

Made to order noodle bar

Kids ordered pizza and dessert from the food hall

This was just one of 5 seating sections. This was by far the largest lounge I’ve ever been to.

Elle, all comfy in her lay flat seat from Hong Kong to Auckland. They provided a seat mattress and a very comfortable pillow and blanket.

Had to include one food picture.

Points management is something that takes time to learn as there are so many strategies and options out there. This is just one example of figuring out how to bridge the gap to an award ticket and I hope it was helpful.

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