Are travel miles not all worth the same on every airline?
I just signed up for points.com to trade miles from one airline to another. But when I say I want to trade 1000 of my delta miles, people are only offering like say 500 alaska miles for my 1000 delta miles with a pretty big fee at that.
Why is that? Are alaska miles worth more than delta miles or are those traders just greedy? Is there a guide somewhere on the internet telling me how many miles on one airline mileage plan is worth how many miles on another airline plan (like a currency converter)?
thanks
Airline mileage programs are not the same, but in many cases the miles need for award travel are similar. I joined points.com and find that most of the transfer and trades are not worth the amount of miles you lose. If you only need a small amount of miles, it may be better to purchase them from directly from the program you want to fly on.
Airline frequent flyer program miles are normally not interchangeable and you do lose quite a few miles when you do so on sites like points.com
http://www.delta.com/skymiles/use_miles/award_upgrade_mileage/sm_award_mileage/index.jsp
http://www.alaskaair.com/as/mileageplan/awards.asp