Can I combine the miles and points from all my separate programs into one account? How can I move 3,000 miles into my favorite program to get that award I want? Can I transfer orphan miles to an account where I can use them?
As a frequent traveler, you’ve more than likely been curious to know the answer to one, or all, of these questions at some point in your traveling career.
Thanks to WebFlyer.com’s new Mileage Converter tool, you won’t have to be curious anymore.
Mileage Converter is a database-driven application that shows frequent travelers how to transfer miles, points, kilometers and credits between any two programs. Users simply select a program they would like to transfer miles out of, enter the mileage amount they would like to transfer, and select a program into which they would like to move the miles, and the Mileage Converter finds all the possible ways to make the transaction.
For example, a frequent flyer who wants to transfer 100,000 American Express Membership Rewards points into United Mileage Plus miles would enter this information — and they would find that there are no less than 209 ways to convert that amount of currency between the two programs at the time of this writing (new data is continually being added, which means the number of conversions options change as well).
And that’s just one example. With the Mileage Converter, we also found there are 88 ways to transfer between Continental OnePass and America West FlightFund, 1,002 options between AmEx and American AAdvantage, and a whopping 3,085 ways to move points from Marriott Rewards to Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan.
It goes without saying not all of these conversion options are of equal value. The “paths” that provide the best results are displayed in an easy-to-read format. And any restrictions associated with a given path can be found by clicking on a handy “Details and Notes” link.
The Mileage Converter also offers a feature to assist those who want to add miles, points or whatever to a certain account. Say, for example, you want to transfer 3,000 miles into your American AAdvantage account, and you want to transfer the necessary miles out of your Continental OnePass account. Enter this information and the converter will show you the amount of miles/points that would need to be transferred from OnePass in order to arrive at 3,000 AAdvantage miles.
The data will be updated continuously to reflect special, limited-time promotional offers and changes in award charts. To discover all of your transfer options, go to http://www.webflyer.com/programs/mileage_converter.
A word of caution: As cool and useful as this tool is, it is still recommended you consider your options very carefully before transferring your miles/points between programs, as the loss in value can often be astounding.
Still, the Mileage Converter tool is fun to play around with, and every once in awhile you just might stumble upon a conversion option that’s too good to pass up.