Award tickets with 2 accounts?
 

My wife and I each have enough miles in our individual United accounts for the award tickets we want. Can I make it just 1 transaction with 2 accounts or do I need separate transactions for each account?

Separate unless you want to transfer your miles to her account or v.v. - which will come with a service charge.

This is true. My wife and I use the same UAL mileage+ accts. so all the miles go to one bank so to speak.

I've booked difficult FF tickets by talking to an agent in the airline's FF department. They could very likely do it for you. American Airlines, no charge. I don't know about the others.

I was definitely able to do that (one reservation/PNR, miles coming from each passenger's respective account) on pre-merger United. Had to do it by phone, though, not online.

I have not tried to do this, however, since the two airlines combined operations on Continental's reservation system so not sure if it works the same way today. I would call United and ask.

THaT 'S WHY I like BA miles both or more miles are comened in a family account and there is no chare to use the other;s miles!!

MMePerdu, My experience with American Airlines is that if you book FF tickets with an agent, they will charge you. On occasion, they will waive the charge.

Avalon2, as far as using BA miles for a flight from the US to Europe, they always go through London and impose heavy surcharges when doing so. What has your experience been?

Here is the way we do it: We both get online and book the ticket we want. Once we have each purchased our tickets with miles, one of us calls United and has the two reservations linked. You can call and have an agent do it, but it will cost you $20.

I book 2 tickets one way using ff miles from one account . Then book 2 tickets return trip using the other ff account.

The only issue that I can see with the one-way tickets is if you want to include a stop-over as part of your trip. United does not allow a stop-over on a one-way, only on a round-trip.

JerryS, BA flights US to Europe do not "always go through London..."

We're using BA miles to fly to Berlin/Warsaw and the pricing is modest.

<i>"JerryS, BA flights US to Europe do not "always go through London..."</i>
They pretty much do...

<i>"We're using BA miles to fly to Berlin/Warsaw and the pricing is modest."</i>
If you are flying entirely on BA you are flying through London as JerryS said. BA doesn't have rights to fly/service directly from North America to "Berlin/Warsaw."

Using BA miles doesn't mean you are on a BA flight. Being on a BA codeshare doesn't mean you are on a BA flight.

Of course, MrNuke, but the comment I was replying to was in regard to using BA miles:

"...as far as using BA miles for a flight from the US to Europe, they always go through London and impose heavy surcharges when doing so."

One <b>CAN</b> use BA miles from Us to Europe <b>AND</b> avoid London's hefty charges.

I vote for Kathie's solution. Do them both simultaneously over the internet. The last time I booked ff tickets with an agent, they lost the reservation. And they charged me for it! At least on the internet you can see what's happening and print out the itinerary at the end as well a get an email confirmation.

I just did what JaneB did. I booked two tickets to Rome on AA on my account and the two return tickets to DFW on my husband's.

kathie's solution is good except that "linking: the two accounts doesn't buy all that much. Linking only puts a human readable note in each record but the computer cannot read it. So if there is an operational problem and the computer decides to make changes (eg seat assignments) it will not neccesarily keep the two seats together.

What I have done is to book two seats in one account. If able, I put it on hold. Then call an agent and request one seat charged to the account and the other seat charged to that person's account. Have never been charged a fee for this and the utopia of all passengers on one round trip ticket is attained.

NoFlyZone, did the account that you booked with have enough miles to pay for both tickets?

The question is that if you don't have enough miles to pay for two tickets can you still put them on hold. As I am typing this am thinking that the answer is yes, that it gives you the option of buying the miles at some later point but before the hold expires. But then you don't buy the miles but call and split the miles cost between the two accounts as you suggest?

Getting two one-way tickets does take away the stopover option. But if you don't want a stopover then it makes it easier to change one of the ways without having to find new availability for both ways.

You can't "split the miles cost between the two accounts". If you don't enough miles, you either purchase more miles or TRANSFER miles from one account to another. But both options are highly expensive. Only useful when one's only a few hundred or a thousand miles short.

Yes, you can place the tickets on hold even without enough miles to "buy" the tickets. It's a long story and I won't go into all the details, but I put two Biz class tickets on hold. Miles were being transferred from Marriott Rewards (one of their travel packages where you get miles and free hotel). We thought the miles would get to the account in time, but when it looked like they wouldn't, so we looked into transferring miles from one of our accounts to the other so I could buy both tickets. It would have cost over $600 to transfer the miles from her account into mine and over $1500 miles to purchase the miles. The miles did arrive in the account on time, but then we had to divide the tickets so one would be purchased out of one account, the other out of the other account. It took a bit of time on the phone, but the agent was very helpful and it worked out fine.