Frequent Flyer Boot Camp #4 - Pooling Miles

One biggie to know about AAdvantage miles...and most other major US airline mileage programs

Get ready, we’re just going to jump right in today. If you haven’t read #1-3 in the series, you will want to start there. This particular frequent flyer miles tip is technical, but will surely save you LOTS of heartache in the future. So, let’s buckle up for this short, but valuable, lesson about how you can almost never pool your precious frequent flyer miles.

You Can’t Combine Miles

Okay, let’s say you need 90,000 miles for you and your spouse to take a romantic, November holiday to Lisbon during “off peak” American Airlines travel season. You have 20,000 miles in your personal AAdvantage frequent flyer account and your spouse has 70,000 miles in theirs, for a total of 90,000 miles. Great, right?

Not really. There’s a catch…you can purchase one way flights to Lisbon for yourself and spouse for 45,000 miles total (AA “off peak” to Europe…see previous post #2) with your spouse’s 70,000-mile account. Done. You’re officially on your way to Portugal. Yippee! Note: You CAN purchase tickets for others with your personal miles.

Now, there is 25,000 miles left in your spouse’s account and only 20,000 still in yours. Yes, that’s 45,000 total miles and that’s exactly what you need for 2 one way tickets home…but you CAN’T POOL or “combine” those miles to purchase one more set of one way tickets home for the both of you. You can’t share miles. (Yes, gifting miles is possible, but it’s expensive and I wouldn’t do it.)

In this case, in order to book tickets back home to the States you would need to wait until you gain another 4,500 miles in your personal account in order to purchase both one way tickets home at the same time. It might take another month or two of using your Citi Advantage Platinum card to gather the additional points needed to complete your adventure.

When your account finally totals 24,500 miles (total points needed for an off peak flight home), you can then purchase your one way ticket home with your personal miles and your spouse can purchase their one way ticket home with 24,500 miles from their leftover 25,000-mile frequent flyer account balance. Done. Lisbon, here you come!

Whew! Now read all of that again more slowly this time. It’s a lot. I know.

All of this is important to understand if you and your spouse each have your own personal AA frequent flyer miles from flying or from having two separate AAdvantage credit card accounts.

Is This The Same With Every Major US Airline?

In recent years, certain frequent flyer programs have become more family-friendly towards the option of pooling miles to purchase frequent flyer tickets. Jetblue and Frontier are the standouts in the US market for this. Still, the four largest U.S. frequent flyer programs — American AAdvantage, United MileagePlus, Delta SkyMiles and Southwest Rapid Rewards — do not permit couples or families to pool their miles. It would be great if this could change in the future. As for now, that 5,000-mile balance sitting in your daughters account has to grow to the amount of purchasing at least a one way ticket (typically about 11,000 miles or more for one way US flights) before it can ever be used.

It’s short and sweet for today, friends…but really, really important to understand this as you make your way towards traveling the world for almost free.

What’s Up Next with Frequent Flyer Bootcamp?

• airline awards charts

• airline alliances and how they work to your advantage

• United Airlines and the Chase Sapphire Preferred credit card

Until then, send me all your questions. I’d seriously love to help!

Happy Travels!

Amy