Traveling to Europe using ff miles (cost, airlines, flight, summer)

[from PA]

Does anyone know how star alliance works? My husband and I have Frequent flyer miles with US Air and United but not enough for both of us to use one airline.
Combined we have enough for both of us. Both airlines are members of the Star Alliance program but I can't figure out how this works. Does it mean that we can combine our United and US Air miles to acquire our tickets?

[Dd714]

I don't think you can combine two different airlines (but I am not familiar with United's program). Check the airlines web site for more info.

FF share programs simply mean you can use your US air miles to fly on United, and vice versa. But you still can't combine two different programs, logically since they might have two different rates of accumulation.

[from PA]

OH I guess we're ok then. I have 74k miles with United but can use them to fly on US Airways. My husband has enough US Airways miles for his flight. United doesn't have non stops to our destination but US Airways does. Plus United wants double the miles. So we can use my United miles on US Air and we should be good to go. Does this sound right?

[Dd714]

Originally Posted by from PA

OH I guess we're ok then. I have 74k miles with United but can use them to fly on US Airways. My husband has enough US Airways miles for his flight. United doesn't have non stops to our destination but US Airways does. Plus United wants double the miles. So we can use my United miles on US Air and we should be good to go. Does this sound right?

Yeah but your airline FF website should give more info. The fact that you are saying United wants double miles tells me that the rate of FF accumulation and thus value is different. In other words 1 united ff mile is not equal to 1 US airways ff mile. It might cost double miles to use united points for US air as well.

On top of remember that it's very difficult to get ff reward seats, particularly to Europe, particularly during the summer, especially non-stop. Be flexible, hope you are planning at least 6 months in the future, you might get lucky.