combining FF miles on different airlines
 

Does anyone have up-to-date info on which airlines, if any, now let you combine miles in their FF programs. I know USAirways and AA ended that perk, but I know at one time UAL and USAirways talked about forming a partnership. Any info on this or other alliances?

I know I could access this info by checking with each individual airline website, but I thought someone may have already done that. Thanks in advance.

Gail....United and USairways do code share but I'm not sure if you can combine the miles from the two into one account. Continental and Northwest code share also.

You can use your US miles to fly on UA or vice versa. You can't combine miles from both programs.

For example, you can use US Dividend Miles to get an award flight on United. You can't fly on United's Mileage Plus partners, though, just UA operated flights.

You can fly on UA and have the miles go to your US account or vice versa.

AFAIK - the above posters are correct in terms of "combining" miles into one program. There are 2 or 3 main "alliances" into which all/most of the airlines will fall: Star Alliance (LH,UA,SQ,etc.), and OneWorld (BA,AA,QF, etc.) are the 2 largest.

Each of these alliances will allow redemption/earning on other partner airlines, but none of them will allow for the actual "combination" of miles in different accounts.

Good luck getting what you need! Dave

Combining miles from different airline FF accounts is usually tricky, if it can be done at all. What is possible and much easier is to accrue your miles in just one airline program when you fly on a partner airline. For example, Continental partners with Northwest, Delta and Virgin Atlantic (among others) and when you purchase your ticket you just need to be sure that it is the COntinental OnePass FF number that goes in the record. The miles are automatically credited to your OnePass account. When I inquired, I was told that getting miles from past flights changed from one program to another is not possible. Your best bet is to check your boarding pass the day of your flight to be sure the account into which you want the miles to go appears.
You can check out the FF portion of airline websites to see who are its partners.

Thanks for your responses - I guess mile combining is also a thing of the past. Regarding alliances which let you choose which airline to credit with miles, that is good info - unfortunately most of my miles and flights are on USAirways, AA, UAL, Delta - no real benefit there - guess if we go on family trip we will have to pay for some tickets or fly on different airlines. Or we could just save up miles for son's to/from college trips starting this fall. Thanks again.

Everybody above is correct, you can't combine miles into one account.

If you don't have any need for the miles you have I will show you at least one avenue to "invest" your AA miles. You could only do this in an increments of 5000 miles, but they are transferable to Hilton Honors program. For every 5K miles you get 10,000 HHonors points, good for 1 night stay in many Hamptons Inn. This may/may not be beneficial to you.

If you are in the giving Christmas mood, you may also donate the miles to the soldiers coming home from Afghanistan/Iraq for a little R&R. Each airline site has more info about that.