American AAdvantage has launched a new program, shareAAmiles, that gives members the option of transferring miles to another member’s account.

The shareAAmiles program allows a member to transfer as many as 60,000 miles per year to others’ accounts and members can receive as many as 15,000 miles into their own account. Each transfer, of course, comes at a price. A transfer of 1,000-5,000 miles costs $50, a 6,000-10,000 mile transfer costs $100 and an 11,000-15,000 mile transfer costs $150.

AAdvantage becomes the second program to introduce a transfer feature this year, joining the Six Continents Priority Club program, and the first airline program to offer this type of benefit. We wouldn’t be at all surprised to see more programs offer this benefit before years’ end, as the ability to transfer miles gives members more flexibility and can be offered at little to no cost to the programs. And, with Points.com continuing to expand its sphere of influence when it comes to providing the back-end management of mileage purchase and gift programs, you can bet the company will be actively pitching this mileage transfer concept to the other programs with which it partners.

Interestingly, the shareAAmiles FAQ states that “miles transferred with the shareAAmiles program do not count toward elite status qualification for AAdvantage Gold, AAdvantage Platinum or AAdvantage Executive Platinum status,” but it doesn’t say anything about miles counting toward lifetime status. A quick call to AAdvantage confirmed that miles transferred to an account will count towards lifetime status.

For more information about shareAAmiles, go to
http://www.aa.com/content/AAdvantage/programDetails/purchasingMiles/purchasingMiles.jhtml.