How Pooling Airline Miles Makes Family Travel Cheaper

If you are a frequent flyer enrolled in a promotional campaign, you can accrue miles more quickly and become eligible for free flights sooner by pooling your points with other frequent flyers. Another option is to transfer reward points from credit cards, which many airlines accept.

In general, children don’t accrue airline points. However, when kids accompany you on family holidays, they can accrue miles, and those additional kilometers from the kids might result in a complimentary ticket for you. Create frequent flyer accounts for all family members with a carrier that enables you to transfer airline points freely. After that, sign them up for the airline’s mileage-sharing program. When you need to travel alone, you can transfer your children’s miles to your account.

By pooling with family and friends, you may accumulate miles more quickly and use them to book flights you would not otherwise be able to afford. This can be a very practical approach to logging mileage. However, one disadvantage of mile-sharing is that one person may wind up giving more miles than others, which might cause animosity. Before you distribute your points, consider whether you would be prepared to give them all away and whether doing so might strain your relationships with friends or family members.

Transferring miles is severely restricted by the majority of frequent flyer programs. Only two domestic carriers, JetBlue and Frontier Airlines allow free mile sharing. These airlines provide excellent flexibility regarding sharing miles, but their network of destinations is much less vast than that of other major U.S. carriers. Other carriers restrict sharing to members of your family, potentially only those who live in your home. Most domestic carriers, including American, Delta, Southwest, and United, charge a fee of approximately 1 cent per mile, plus processing costs. For these reasons, it may be more practical and cost-effective to use your points to book a flight for a family member or acquaintance.

One of the more generous pooling programs is offered by JetBlue. A free Points Pooling account can be created by any TrueBlue member who is 21 years of age or older. This person will serve as the “Pool Leader,” inviting other members, granting permissions, and redeeming points. Members are obligated to donate 100% of the points they earn on every purchase, but they may still use their own accounts to redeem for travel.

Dubai Skywards allows users of its rewards program to share miles with relatives. Every time you or a family member travel with Emirates, flydubai Airline, or other partners, shop with Emirates partners, or transfer miles from any of their conversion partners, you can pool points to a family account.

Originally published at https://chrisjanese.net on February 3, 2023.