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United, Lufthansa, US Airways, Air Canada, ANA, Singapore, and TACA/Avianca are all members of the Star Alliance.
With few exceptions, all of their miles can be used with equal access to any Star Alliance carrier’s Saver award space.
You cannot transfer one type of miles to another. For instance, you cannot transfer your Lufthansa miles to your United account.
But you can combine the power of your miles by using miles from several different accounts to book awards on the same flight. For instance, if there are six economy Saver award seats on a roundtrip from Newark to Paris on a United flight, you can book one seat from each of your United, Lufthansa, US Airways, Air Canada, ANA, and Singapore accounts. (And you can select six seats together by calling the operating carrier of each flight.)
This ability to combine the power of partner miles is paramount for families or other large traveling groups. It’s fairly difficult to amass 360,000 United miles, the number you’d need for six roundtrip awards to Europe. But it’s not so hard to earn the number of miles you need for one roundtrip in each of several programs.
- The Lufthansa Premier Miles & More World MasterCard comes with 50,000 bonus Miles & More miles after spending $5k in the first three months (until 12/15/13 when the offer ends)
- The US Airways Premier World MasterCard® comes with 30,000 US Airways miles after first purchase (until the card disappears during the merger with American Airlines)
- TACA/Avianca often sells its miles for as little as 1.5 cents each.
- Singapore, Air Canada, and ANA are all transfer partners of Membership Rewards and Starpoints, so you can rack up the miles by getting cards like the Starwood Preferred Guest® Credit Card from American Express and Premier Rewards Gold Card.
- And United miles are the easiest of all with a personal and business credit card plus the ability to transfer Ultimate Rewards earned on several Chase credit cards to United.
How do you plan a trip for six? What routes have good award space? How do you book many seats from many different accounts?
The first–and perhaps most important step–should take place well before you’re ready to book the awards.
1. Make sure you are earning compatible miles.
The easiest Star Alliance programs for Americans to earn miles in are:
- United
- US Airway
- TACA/Avianca
- Lufthansa (Miles & More)
- Aeroplan (Air Canada)
- ANA
- Singapore
The key is that all types of miles can be used on the same award flights. The listed programs all have equal access to Saver economy space on all the Star Alliance airlines.
2. Search for all the seats together as if you were booking everyone on reservation.
Let’s imagine a roundtrip award from Newark to Paris for six passengers.
Go to the best search engine for the search you want. For this search, I would recommend united.com, which I explained how to search here. Search as if you were going to redeem United miles for all six passengers. Here is the search result for six passengers from Newark to Paris in March–pretty excellent space.
As a bit of an aside, almost all of the space is on Lufthansa flights. When they release award seats on a flight, they often release a lot of seats.
Lufthansa award space is not ideal for this exercise because all the Star Alliance programs except United and US Airways collect fuel surcharges on Lufthansa-operated award flights.
We’d prefer the United direct flight because only Lufthansa collects fuel surcharges on United-operated award flights to Europe.
Space isn’t as good on the United flight, but there are a few days with six saver award seats on the same flight.
Select an outbound and return and go to the payment page. Note the taxes per person. These will be the same regardless of the type of miles used to book the award, since they are imposed by governments not airlines. Other fees and whether fuel surcharges are imposed will vary by the type of miles.
After noting the flight information of the flights with award space–date, time, flight number–and the taxes, I am ready to book. But since I am not booking all six seats with United miles, I abort the booking in progress to move on to the actual way I’ll book the awards.
3. Book while using holds advantageously.
The goal is to get all six people booked on the same flights. The second best scenario is to book nobody on any flights and to start searching again. The worst outcome is to book a few people on the flights and then have award space disappear before the the rest are booked
To maximize the chances of one of the first two scenarios, we’ll use hold rules to our advantage. Each airline has different hold rules. For example:
- United: 24+ hours with the PayPal or ghost account tricks
- US Airways: 3 days if you ask
I would start with the airlines that allow holds and put all the seats I plan to book with those airlines’ miles on hold. Then I’d move to the airlines that don’t allow holds and book tickets one by one, circling back to book the held tickets last.
4. Get seats together online or by calling the operating carrier.
For icing on the cake, you can easily get seats together. Call the operating carrier of each segment and select seats.
Give your confirmation number, and if they can’t find your ticket that way, give your flight date, flight number, and name. To find the operating carriers’ numbers, google “contact phone [airline]“.
Explain to the agent that you have six passengers on the same flight on several record locators and that you want seats all together.
One More Thing
If you’re not on the same reservation, you may run into problems during irregular operations. For instance if one of your flights is cancelled, you may be automatically rebooked separately on different flights and need to go through some phone agent agony to get it all straightened back out.
I consider this a pretty minor concern, but it is one to be aware of.
Recap
Booking several award tickets from several Star Alliance airline accounts is common and easy. Pay careful attention to the types of miles you’re earning and to the hold policies, and you’ll be traveling with your companions in no time.
Right now several Star Alliance carriers have a great credit card offer with miles that are easy to rack up.
- The Lufthansa Premier Miles & More World MasterCard comes with 50,000 bonus Miles & More miles after spending $5k in the first three months (until 12/15/13 when the offer ends)
- The US Airways Premier World MasterCard® comes with 30,000 US Airways miles after first purchase (until the card disappears during the merger with American Airlines)
- TACA/Avianca often sells its miles for as little as 1.5 cents each.
- Singapore, Air Canada, and ANA are all transfer partners of Membership Rewards and Starpoints, so you can rack up the miles by getting cards like the Starwood Preferred Guest® Credit Card from American Express and Premier Rewards Gold Card.
- And United miles are the easiest of all with a personal and business credit card plus the ability to transfer Ultimate Rewards earned on several Chase credit cards to United.
Just getting started in the world of points and miles? The Chase Sapphire Preferred is the best card for you to start with.
With a bonus of 60,000 points after $4,000 spend in the first 3 months, 5x points on travel booked through the Chase Travel℠ and 3x points on restaurants, streaming services, and online groceries (excluding Target, Walmart, and wholesale clubs), this card truly cannot be beat for getting started!
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Great post
Would like to see similar one re combining hotel points from different family member accounts, when U have time.
The premise of this article is to “combine” partner airline miles to leverage their power. There are no “partner” hotel accounts. For instance, SPG and Hilton points cannot be used at any of the same properties.
The only way to combine hotel points would be to actually combine them between two people’s accounts in the same program, which many programs allow for free.
GREAT information!!! Thank you Scott and your team for having all of these great teaching! I’ve learned so much from all of you!!
Thank you for the compliment.
I subscribed your blog yesterday and this is my first reading. Great posting!
My family of 6 people (spouse, parents, 2 sons) usually travel for vacation together and it frequently gave me a headache to stay in the same flight. This is extremely helpful.
Question A:
Did you ever wrote how to book award business or economy class
1. using 110K or 80K US Air miles from NYC or USA to Sydney, Australia with a stopover in Auckland, New Zealand? (In another way, NYC to Auckland with a stopover in Sydney, Australia)?
2. using150K or 10K delta skymiles, on the same route?
My family plans to take vacations during mid-Dec 2014 — 1/1/2015. I have 330K US air miles, 420K Delta skymiles, Spg 280K points. Thanks in advance.
Question B:
Any advice to book 6 people in the same flight using AA miles and other One World miles (e.g., BA)?
It will make your life easier to get some people in business and some people in economy on the same flight because you’ll need fewer of each type of award seat.
I haven’t written this specifically about combing the power on oneworld miles, but the premise is the exact same. Search on ba.com, hold the AA awards, book the BA awards, then book the AA awards.
Note that the flights I talked about in this article are in March to Europe, which is not a peak time. Over Christmas and New Year’s is a peak time almost everywhere, so your search will be much, much harder.
Scott,
Which *A partner would show the best, and cheapest, availability for UA First from the mainland to Hawaii (our favorite trip)? I need to xfer 80K Amex MR soon and not sure what to do. I do NOT have any miles in any *A airline except UA and US. Thanks.
Singapore charges only 60k miles roundtrip in two-cabin first on United or US Airways flights: http://www.singaporeair.com/pdf/ppsclub_krisflyer/charts/StarAlliance_RoundTrip.pdf
Second best is Lufthansa at 35k miles each way, so make sure you jump on the Lufthansa credit card to supplement your Membership Rewards for this trip.
(No fuel surcharges imposed by any Star Alliance partners on United award flights to Hawaii.)
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Great post! This is often a problem for me as we are a family of 5. After spending lots of time searching UA site for star alliance availability and BA site for one world availability, I have learned quite a bit myself! We are booked on a trip to china this Christmas, and I have a good idea how to book us for future trips, all I need is more vacation days and more miles as I am the only one churning cards!
Enjoy the trip!
Thanks to your advice, I’m currently working on this to take my family of 5 to Europe in May. I would like to see a post of what places to see while in Europe for 3 weeks. 🙂 Great post Scott!
Awesome! Enjoy the trip! I don’t write much about destinations because everyone here has a different travel style, but you can’t go wrong with many places in Europe.
How often does the worst outcome occur for you? I can’t have my wife and a few kids get split up. Are there any other options? I don’t want to pay for the transfer of miles among accounts. In you example with holds with United and USAir, do you open up two different browsers (Lufthansa and Air Canada) on one computer and two more (ANA and Singapore) on another and try to book all awards at the “same” time?
It never has and most airlines allow a free cancellation within 24 hours. And all allow a paid cancellation.
From my experience you have a great chance if you book super early, as early as reservations open up. I did this back in Feb to book my family on AA coming back from china in January. 5 seperate reservations as the miles are in 5 different accounts, I booked 2 adults online (seperately) and put them on hold, then I call in to book the 3 kids’ as you can’t book kids reservation online if there is not an adult in the reservation. All 5 of us are on the same plane in F. It was stressful but because I called up the day the seats were loaded into the system I was able to grab the seats with no problem.
Wow! Enjoy the trip!