Combining frequent flyer miles within an airline alliance.
 

We have a small pile of Air France and Singapore Air. We have lots of Delta, but not enough to use the way we want. Can we somehow combine or transfer AF & SA to Delta? I know I could call Delta, but I wanted some input before I tackle that. Thanks for your help.

The simple answer is NO.

There are some ways to transfer points from one program to another, but it's limited to few programs, and if possible, you will loose a good deal of points during the transfers.

One is Hilton HHonors program, and while you will get a nice exchange rate tansferring airline miles to hotel points, you will get a very bad exchange rate in transferring points to miles. I'm pretty sure your airlines don't participate in that exchange anyway, but I used it as an example.

American and Hilton and Virgin Atlantic all participate in the exchange program, so here is what would happen if I wanted to exchange my AA miles to VA miles through HHonors:

5000 AA miles = 10,000 HHonors points
So far so good, but
10,000 HHonors points = 1500 VA miles.

So you see, it's a loosing proposition.

Diners Club conversion is little better, but it won't work either. You could only convert AA and UA miles to Diners points (1 to 1), although you could convert Diners points to Delta and Air France miles (2 to 1).

That's about the only 2 options out there now.

If somebody knows of others, please post.

The only other way to transfer miles that I know of is through points.com but the conversion rate is horrible. You usually end up with less than 1/10th of what you started out with. Plus although DL does participate, I'm pretty sure AF and SQ do not.

try calling Delta the AF miles may be moveable

seafox,

I believe you're confusing 'moveable' with 'useable'.

You could USE Delta miles to get a ticket on Air France, and in reverse, you could use AF miles to get a ticket on DL. BUT you can't MOVE the miles from one account to another or COMBINE to have enough to get a ticket.

AAFrequentFlyer - you may be right....but it never hurts to beg....sometimes the results are remakable - thannks again for the clarification

AAFrequentFlyer: Alas, that is what I was afraid of. No combining allowed. The last time I tried begging at Delta, I got a sneer I could see through the phone line!

In future, have them put the miles for Air France and SIngapore Airlines on your Delta account in the first place. Doesn't help you now though.
Depending where you live, you only should have 2 or maybe 3 frequent flyer accounts and consolidate miles in those.