does anyone know about transferring frequent flyer miles?

[grasswire]

A family member of mine is in distress, stuck on an amtrak train that is running 14 hours late because of flooding and unable to make his next connection for an important family court hearing. If we could get him off the train at the next big city and fly him, it would be a miracle.

Does anyone know how that frequent flyer miles can be transferred to another party? He would probably fly SWA if we can make it happen.

Thanks in advance for any input.

[pitohui]

1. yeah i know something about it

most of the time it is a terrible and expensive idea, instead of transferring the miles, you get the correct legal name of the person who will be traveling and you use the miles in your account to pay for the ticket

in this way, you do not pay the costly transfer fees for the miles, you are just using the miles to buy an e-ticket in his name

it is allowed to do this for friends and family members, buying tickets for them with your miles, it is only NOT alloed to sell your miles or frequent flyer award to a stranger for cash

i hope you understand what i'm saying

for instance, my husband wants to fly to HNL (honolulu) but rarely flies so he only has 4,000 miles in his account, instead of spending $75 or whatever to transfer the needed miles into his account, i go into MY account and buy the ticket with my miles in his name -- i have done this many, many, MANY times, and i never transfer the miles to his account first, because if i did, i'd be spending like $100 in fees instead of $10 in fees to buy him a ticket

"transferring miles" is a scam by the airlines to persuade people to pay an extra fee for nothing, but the airlines have no conscience

i'm not familiar with the southwest program, because frankly i'm too old to fly in coach, but i have no reason to believe it's any different -- you DON'T transfer the miles, you go directly to the part where you purchase the ticket with the miles

any questions, you can clarify with some of the folks at flyertalk.com, they have a southwest forum