Gifting and Transferring Miles and Points

Can You Transfer Miles to Another Person?

Miles and points accumulated in frequent flyer accounts are generally not transferable between members, with limited exceptions. Airlines design programs to reward the specific individual flying, not to create a liquid currency freely movable between accounts. Allowing unrestricted transfers would undermine the program's purpose — encouraging brand loyalty — and create a parallel gray market where points are sold person-to-person outside the airline's control. Despite this, airlines have introduced controlled sharing mechanisms that allow transfers under specific circumstances, typically at a cost.

Programs that permit direct mile-to-mile transfers between members include American AAdvantage (transfer within a household or to any member for a fee), British Airways Avios (pool within a household at no charge), and Flying Blue (transfer for a fee). Programs that prohibit transfers entirely — Delta SkyMiles and United MileagePlus chief among them — instead offer alternative mechanisms like booking award tickets for other people using your miles without transferring the miles themselves. This distinction is critical: most programs let you use your miles to book flights for anyone, even if the miles cannot move to another account.

Household accounts are the cleanest form of miles sharing. British Airways Household Account allows up to six family members to pool Avios earned across all their accounts into a single combined balance, redeemable by any member for any traveler. There is no fee and no restriction on relationship type — the household designation is self-defined. Flying Blue Familie allows two adults to pool miles between their accounts at a small per-mile fee. Singapore KrisFlyer allows points sharing between two members linked as family, with restrictions. Household pooling is the most cost-effective mechanism when it is available, as it avoids the per-mile transfer fees that can significantly erode value.

Transferring Miles: Costs and Rules by Program

American AAdvantage charges a transfer fee of $0.01 per transferred mile with a $15 minimum. Transferring 20,000 AAdvantage miles to another member costs $200 — almost certainly more than the transferred miles are worth as a redemption. This fee structure makes direct AAdvantage transfers economically irrational except in narrow circumstances where the recipient urgently needs a specific number of miles to complete a redemption and the transferred miles' value at their destination exceeds the transfer cost. The fee exists precisely to discourage casual transfers and ensure miles serve their intended purpose of rewarding the flying member.

British Airways Avios household pooling is free for linked members. Non-household Avios transfers carry fees of 1.25 pence ($0.015) per Avios transferred, similar in effect to AAdvantage's structure. The household mechanism is so much more favorable than paid transfers that Avios pooling strategy centers on household linking rather than individual transfers. Iberia Plus points can also pool with British Airways Avios through the Avios program partnership, adding a cross-airline pooling dimension unavailable in most other programs.

Air Canada Aeroplan allows family sharing within an Aeroplan Family account — up to eight members can combine points into a shared pool. This is a genuine free pooling mechanism without transfer fees. The family account allows strategic concentration: a family that collectively earns points across individual accounts can aggregate them into a shared pool, then redeem for a single large premium award (business class for four from a pooled balance) that no individual account could independently fund. United MileagePlus does not permit transfers but introduced "Pool Miles" for household members in 2023, allowing pooling between two accounts in the same household.

Gifting Miles: Award Tickets for Others

The most practical way to use your miles for someone else is to book an award ticket in their name using your miles. This is universally permitted — airlines want you to book flights on their carriers, and whether the seat is for you or your spouse or your parent is irrelevant from their perspective. The process is identical to booking a personal award ticket, except you enter the traveler's name, passport information, and contact details instead of your own. Your miles are deducted, the ticket is issued in the recipient's name, and they travel on the flight.

Some programs restrict points used for gifted awards from earning elite qualifying credit. If your mother flies on an award ticket booked from your AAdvantage account, she will earn EQMs and redeemable miles toward her own account (since she is the traveler), but those miles accrue to her — not to you. Co-branded credit cards used for the award booking's taxes may earn points on the charge regardless of who travels. The key limitation is that award tickets booked for others are subject to the same change, cancellation, and upgrade rules as personal awards — and the beneficiary may not have the elite status to request upgrades if the booking program normally extends that privilege only to elite members.

Points gifting programs — specifically Marriott Bonvoy's "Gift Points" feature and similar hotel-program mechanisms — allow direct transfer of hotel points to a recipient's hotel account for use in hotel redemptions. This is distinct from airline mile gifting in that the recipient receives the points in their own account to use as they wish, rather than receiving a specific booking. Marriott allows gifting up to 100,000 points per year to a recipient, with the giver paying the face transfer price rather than a premium fee. This mechanism is useful for accumulating points in a family member's account toward a redemption they are targeting.

Mile Pooling Strategies for Families and Groups

Families traveling together — especially on premium cabin international redemptions — face a common challenge: the miles required for four business class seats to Europe may be 240,000 to 360,000 miles, an amount difficult to accumulate in a single account. Mile pooling strategies address this by combining balances across household members into a single actionable pool. The British Airways Household Account and Aeroplan Family Account are the most permissive implementations, but even programs without formal pooling can be managed strategically.

When formal pooling is unavailable, the strategy shifts to booking all family award tickets from the account with the highest balance, accepting that one account bears the full redemption cost. The other family members' miles remain in their own accounts for future redemptions. Coordinating credit card earning across a household — with one member holding a Chase Sapphire Reserve (3x travel), another holding a Venture X (2x everything), and both transferring to a shared target program at redemption — effectively functions as informal pooling even without the airline's official pooling product.

Group award travel beyond the immediate family is more complex. Airlines limit the number of award seats available on any flight, typically two per booking at off-peak and one at peak — a significant constraint for groups larger than two. Corporate travel programs and group booking desks sometimes offer different award rules, but for personal travel, planning group awards requires searching for flights with multiple available seats (rare in premium cabins) or coordinating separate bookings on the same flight using different members' miles. The Seats.aero "group" filter allows searching specifically for routes with multiple available award seats, an essential tool for group planning.