Topping up someone else's airmiles with my own

Hi

Hope someone can answer this for me.

My brother and I would like to book 2 return UC reward flights LHR-LAX. We have found availability. The problem we have is that I have 120,000 miles. My brother only has 96,000 miles. He has already purchased 30,000 miles and I have already gifted him another 30,000 miles. Is there anyway I can transfer an additional 4,000 miles to him to make up the 100,000? If not is there anyway around this problem other than him doing one leg in PE?

Thanks in advance.

Michael

[Neil]

No - you can't give him any miles from your account.

There are a couple of options that I can see you have left. Firstly, you could buy another 30k miles, giving you 150k, and then book 1 leg of his UC reward from your account and 1 from his account (you have to book a minimum of 1 full leg from each account), but that sounds pricey.

The other option is for him to buy an L economy ticket with cash and then upgrade to UC using 60k miles.

I must say, it sounds an expensive way you have gone about it, with buying/gifting 60k's worth of miles, you have already spent £930, towards a supposed 'free flight', and you still have taxes etc to be added, which will be another £600 or so.

Neil

I am sad to say that your miles buying and gifting strategy was wrong, you should have bought the 30k for yourself and 30k for him, so you had 150k and he 66k. In this case you could spend miles for your ticket out and back, and one way for him, then get the other way for him from his miles. You need to have the full allocation for each leg from one account, i.e. 50k - you cannot transfer 4k to him in your current situation or mix and match.

So, you need 4k, well there are some routes to doing that:

- open a Virgin Wines account and buy a case and get the special offer bonus for your first that'll be 3,000 miles (do it exactly to the T&Cs which means online and there's a special offer code)
- get a V credit card and buy some stuff
- go to the Virgin Atlantic shopping channel and buy more stuff

EDIT Drat, 1 minute Neil!

If you do what slinky says it is your brother that needs to open a Virgin wine A/C etc and not you as he is the one that is short by 4k miles. He would need to follow a specific link from the 'partners' section on the VS website once he logs in to get bonus plus the usual 750 miles per case.

I stand to be corrected so don't get your hopes up but isn't an other option for your brother to transfer back 30k miles to you. So you will have 150k miles allowing you to book 1 1/2 legs and he will have 50k and can book the remaning 1/2 leg for himself (just make sure you liaise over which leg you each book!)

[Nottingham Nick]

The Virgin Wine option is a good one in theory, but it depends how soon you want to book. I recall threads on here about points from Virgin Wines taking an age to post - don't know if this is still the case. (no pun intended )

Nick

[Neil]

I stand to be corrected so don't get your hopes up but isn't an other option for your brother to transfer back 30k miles to you. So you will have 150k miles allowing you to book 1 1/2 legs and he will have 50k and can book the remaning 1/2 leg for himself (just make sure you liaise over which leg you each book!)

No, you cannot do that, all purchases/gifts are non refundable/non transferable. It is basically the same as transferring miles between accounts.

Neil

No - you can't give him any miles from your account.

There are a couple of options that I can see you have left. Firstly, you could buy another 30k miles, giving you 150k, and then book 1 leg of his UC reward from your account and 1 from his account (you have to book a minimum of 1 full leg from each account), but that sounds pricey.

The other option is for him to buy an L economy ticket with cash and then upgrade to UC using 60k miles.

I must say, it sounds an expensive way you have gone about it, with buying/gifting 60k's worth of miles, you have already spent £930, towards a supposed 'free flight', and you still have taxes etc to be added, which will be another £600 or so.

Neil

Thanks for the response guys.

Neil, could you clarify what you said about it being expensive. An UC revenue return LHR-LAX would cost £2914 for the period I am going. Therefore buying 60k of miles at £930 and adding tax of £356 would make the reward ticket about £1600k cheaper. Surely this makes more financial sense than buying a revenue ticket or am I missing something?

[Neil]

Firstly £3000 is a lot to LAX, with Z's in the sales often coming in at around the £1800-2000 price level, so that is what I was using as my price basis.

With a L fare coming in around £700/£800 plus only 60k miles, in my opinion it would have seemed a better way to utilise the miles you already had without buying any, all for similar cost. Also, with that way we you still earn miles and TP's on both fares.

Neil

Firstly £3000 is a lot to LAX, with Z's in the sales often coming in at around the £1800-2000 price level, so that is what I was using as my price basis.

With a L fare coming in around £700/£800 plus only 60k miles, in my opinion it would have seemed a better way to utilise the miles you already had without buying any, all for similar cost. Also, with that way we you still earn miles and TP's on both fares.

Neil

Neil, VS prices are climbing higher and higher, I don't think the OPs perspective is in any way wrong in the way he was looking at it. And, VS sales are rare at the moment - note also that in the last sale to the West coast I bought my #1 a Z for £2,200.

That said, for mpase, if you do as Neil suggests and buy an economy fare that is upgradeable, you could spend £600-700 on the fare and only use 60k miles to upgrade both legs (plus additional tax). This is because the class of fare you book into UC on a miles ticket, is the same as booking economy and upgrading.

What Neil is saying is that if you buy 30k more miles then book the tickets you'll pay £300+ for the miles, then the taxes, and they may not be far apart in cost. Plus, in the latter scenario, you'll have a bunch left for the next trip y) .

Does he have any transferable hotel points? E.g. 30,000 Hilton honors points would be 4,500 Virgin miles and the transfer is usually reasonably quick.

Regards
R3dV