How to Gift Airline Miles: Complete Transfer Guide

With another celebration always just around the corner—be it a holiday or a birthday—finding original ideas for gifts can be a challenge. However, if you have a frequent traveler in the family or a points and miles aficionado friend, gifting airline miles is a neat way to help fund their future travels.

The policies and costs of gifting airline miles vary widely from one loyalty program to the next. Let’s look at how to gift miles with the top airlines in the United States, the fees for gifting miles and when it does and doesn’t make sense to do so.

Airline Mile Gifting: How It Works and When to Use It

Gifting miles isn’t the same as transferring miles to another member.

When you transfer airline miles from your account to another member, you’re taking these miles from your existing stock of miles. For instance, if you transfer 20,000 miles to your significant other from your stock of 50,000 miles, you’ll be left with 30,000 miles.

In contrast, gifting miles involves buying new miles and then sending these directly to your friend or family member. That way, your stock of miles will remain untouched.

It can make sense to gift miles to another member to help them with last minute award bookings or to provide them with a useful gift for future redemptions. Likewise, airline loyalty programs often run promotional discounts, enabling you to get discounts and bonus miles when gifting airline miles, reducing the cost per mile.

Key Considerations When Gifting Points and Miles

Can you gift miles? Sure.

Should you gift miles? That depends.

Let’s look at the key considerations to make when gifting airline miles.

Eligibility and Transfer Policies Across Airlines

Airline loyalty programs apply different rewards transfer policies to mile gifting.

Most programs require your recipient to already have an existing account that’s at least 10 days old with a minimum of 1 mile earned to their name. Luckily, mile gifting and mile transfers aren’t restricted solely to family members. That means you can also give the gift of miles to your friends.

Fees and Costs Involved

Gifting miles is far from cheap.

You can expect to pay anywhere between $0.02 and $0.04 per mile gifted. On top of that, transfer fees and taxes can make gifting airline miles even more expensive.

That said, taking advantage of promotional discounts can save you a significant amount of cash. For instance, United has run a limited-time mile bonus of 90% when you gift 40,000 miles or more.

While such discounts do offer savings, it’s important to keep in mind that airline miles are typically redeemed for less value than what you’ll pay for them. Generally, you can redeem airline miles for between 1 cent and 2 cents per mile. So if you’re paying more than this per mile when gifting miles, your recipient can expect to receive less value than what you paid for them.

For this reason, it’s often far better to either book an award fare on behalf of someone using your own miles (assuming you have enough to do so) or to simply give them the cash equivalent upfront.

Nevertheless, airline miles still make for a thoughtful gift and can be justified if your friend or family member is just a couple of thousand miles short of their dream award redemption. In this case, swapping out another pair of “fun” socks for a few thousand airline miles can be a great gift alternative.

Transfer Limits and Expiration Policies

Many airline miles expire, and gifted miles are no exception. However, their lifetime is no less than that of miles earned through flying or co-branded card expenditure.

Generally speaking, airline miles expire after 12 to 36 months of account inactivity. Account activity includes a range of qualifying activities, from flying with the airline to earning miles by spending with their co-branded credit card. For Delta and United miles, you won’t have to worry about expiry or qualifying activity as long as your account remains open and in good standing.

When gifting airline miles, you’ll need to adhere to the transfer limits set by the loyalty program. Depending on the airline, there can be transactional, daily or annual limits for both gifting and receiving airline miles. For instance, you can gift a maximum of 60,000 Delta SkyMiles per calendar year, while United allows you to gift a maximum of 175,000 United MileagePlus miles per calendar year. Alternatively, Southwest applies a daily and transactional maximum of 60,000 Rapid Rewards points for gifting, with no annual limit.

Step-by-Step Guide to Gifting Points and Miles by Airline

Let’s look at the exact policies and processes of gifting miles with some of the major U.S. airlines.

How to Gift Delta SkyMiles

Delta Air Lines enables you to gift up to 60,000 SkyMiles per calendar year to another Delta SkyMiles member. You can gift SkyMiles to a maximum of four different members per transaction.

To gift Delta SkyMiles to someone, they’ll first need to be a member of the Delta SkyMiles loyalty program and have an active account that’s a minimum of 10 days old with earnings of at least 1 mile.

Start by logging into your Delta SkyMiles account. Then, navigate to “SkyMiles” and then to “Gift Miles.” From here, scroll to “Recipients” and select “Add recipient” to fill out the necessary information. You’ll need to have your recipient’s name and Delta SkyMiles number at the ready.

You can gift a minimum of 2,000 Delta Air Lines gift miles and a maximum of 60,000 miles, with gifting options increasing in increments of 2,000. It costs $0.035 per mile plus taxes to gift Delta SkyMiles, meaning every 2,000 miles will cost you $70 plus applicable taxes. So, gifting the maximum of 60,000 miles to someone would cost you $2,100 plus taxes.

Once you’ve completed the transaction, it will take 24 to 48 hours for the miles to post to your recipient’s account.

Alternatively, you can opt to transfer your own Delta SkyMiles to someone. This comes with the advantage of higher transfer limits and lower costs per mile transferred.

Just as with gifting miles, your recipient doesn’t need to be one of your family members. However, they need to have a Delta SkyMiles account that’s at least 10 days old with a minimum of 1 mile earned.

It costs $0.01 per mile transferred with an additional transfer fee of $30 per transaction. That means transferring 2,000 miles would cost you $50 plus taxes while transferring 60,000 miles would cost you $630 plus taxes—a much cheaper alternative to gifting miles. Of course, these miles are coming out of your own stash, so you’re essentially redeeming them. The exact redemption value you get will depend on how many miles you’re transferring, how many transactions are involved and the cost in taxes.

For instance, transferring 30,000 miles would cost you $300 plus a transaction fee of $30. That would give you a pre-tax redemption value of approximately $0.009 cents per mile.

You can transfer up to 150,000 miles per calendar year and no Delta SkyMiles account can receive more than 300,000 transferred miles per calendar year.

Check out some of the best ways to use your Delta miles here: How to Use Delta SkyMiles

How to Gift United MileagePlus Miles

With the United MileagePlus program, you can gift up to 175,000 miles per calendar year.

You’ll simply need to log into your United MileagePlus account, navigate to the “Buy Miles” page and enter the number miles you wish to gift, plus the details of your recipient, including their name and MileagePlus number.

When buying United MileagePlus miles to gift to another person, pricing can vary. Generally, it’ll cost you $35 per 1,000 miles gifted plus taxes. When taxes are added on, you’ll end up paying approximately $0.038 per mile gifted.

However, United regularly offers mile bonuses that can be lucrative when gifting miles. For instance, as of the time of writing, United is offering a mile bonus of 90% when you gift 40,000 miles or more. This significantly reduces the cost per mile, to an average of around ~$0.02 per mile gifted. If you’re planning on gifting a friend or family member United miles, keep an eye out for these offers to make your spending go further.

Just keep in mind that the bonus miles also count toward your 175,000 mile limit per calendar year.

Once you’ve completed the gifting transaction, miles can take up to 72 hours to show up in your recipient’s account, although in some cases it can be instant.

As a plus point, you’ll earn miles on the miles you gift, as long as you purchase them using a co-branded United MileagePlus card. That’s because the miles you buy count as a United purchase, enabling you to benefit from the points multiplier on your card.

Alternatively, you can transfer United miles out of your own pocket to your friends and family. You can transfer between 500 and 100,000 miles, at a cost of $7.50 per 500 miles transferred, plus a transaction fee of $30.

How to Gift American Airlines AAdvantage Miles

The American Airlines’ AAdvantage program enables you to transfer your own miles to other members as well as buy miles to send to friends or family. However, the latter option is costly, so you’d be better off to avoid gifting American Airlines miles using this method.

You can transfer up to 200,000 American Airlines gift miles to another AAdvantage member every calendar year. Transfers cost $0.005 per mile, which works out to $5 per 1,000 miles transferred. This includes taxes and is free of any additional transfer fees, making American Airlines miles transfers cheaper than other airline loyalty programs.

Alternatively, if you don’t have enough miles to send to someone, you could buy miles for yourself and then transfer them to your friend or family member. Miles cost between $0.0376 and $0.0245, depending on how many you buy—the greater the quantity, the lower the cost per mile. The AAdvantage program runs discounts of up to 35% on miles purchases.

However, you’ll still be subject to the transfer fee of $0.005 per mile, making this one of the most expensive ways of gifting miles to another person. For instance, it would cost you $85.20 to buy and then transfer 2,000 miles to another member.

Check out some of the best ways to earn miles with American Airlines here: How to Earn AAdvantage Miles

How to Gift Southwest Rapid Rewards Points

Gifting Southwest Rapid Rewards points to a friend or family member is a straightforward process.

Unlike with other airline loyalty programs, there’s no limit to the number of points you can transfer within a calendar year. Instead, there’s just a daily transfer limit of 60,000 points.

It costs $0.03 per point transferred—regardless of the number of points you buy to gift—with a minimum transfer requirement of 2,000 points. You can choose how many points you want to transfer in increments of 500.

That means it costs $65 to transfer 2,000 points and $1,800 to transfer 60,000 points. Keep in mind that there are no additional transfer fees or taxes tacked onto this price.

Additionally, if you have points to spare, you could consider transferring your points to another member. However, this comes at a hefty fee of $5 per 500 points transferred, which works out to $0.01 per point.

Alternative Options to Gifting Points and Miles

Buying Airline Gift Cards

While gifting airline miles is a fun gift idea, it’s not always the best way to stretch your dollar. Often, you’d be better off simply giving your recipient the cash upfront and skipping the middleman of gifted miles. One way to do this is with an airline gift card.

Airline gift cards do what they say on the tin. You simply enter the cash amount you wish to give your recipient and choose whether you want a physical or virtual gift card issued. Your recipient will then be able to use the gift toward airfare and other purchases with the airline. This can be a great option for those without a frequent flyer account.

The only drawback to an airline gift card is that it narrows your recipient’s redemption options. If they’re shopping around for flights and find a United flight that’s $300 cheaper than a Delta flight, your already-purchased Delta gift card will be more of an inconvenience than a blessing. For this reason, it’s important to be sure that they’ll fly with the airline you’re planning to buy the gift card from. Otherwise, stick to gifting them the cash upfront toward a future trip.

Redeeming Miles for Flights for Someone Else

If circumstances allow, the best option is to directly book a flight for your family member or friend. Regardless of whether it’s a cash or an award fare, booking the ticket yourself bypasses the cost of gifting miles, including taxes and transfer fees, making it the most efficient use of your miles.

The single drawback to this approach is that it will take miles out of your own pocket (assuming it’s an award fare), so ensure you have enough leftover for your own upcoming trips.

Gifting Credit Card Points

If you have Amex Membership Rewards points, Chase Ultimate Rewards points, Capital One miles, Bilt Points or Citi ThankYou points to spare, using these toward another person’s travel expenses can be a great gift.

Generally speaking, you can transfer credit card points to a frequent flyer account only if it’s in your name. However, that doesn’t stop you from transferring credit card points to your own frequent flyer account, to then transfer them onward to your recipient’s account. Alternatively, if you know where and when your recipient wants to fly, you can use your credit card points to book an award fare directly from your card account (assuming the airline is a transfer partner of your card issuer).

By using the latter method, you’ll save on costly transfer fees and exorbitant mile gifting prices, while getting the greatest value for your points. Using points earned on your credit card to book award flights typically offers the biggest bang for your buck, as you can take advantage of the widest range of airlines as well as distance-based partner award charts.

Tips for Maximizing the Value of Gifted Points and Miles

While mile gifting isn’t typically the best way to squeeze the most value out of your spending, you can still get better (or worse) redemption rates depending on how you play your cards.

For starters, it’s best to gift miles during promotional periods. You can get up to 90% mile bonuses, as well as competitive discounts, on gifted miles.

Likewise, it’s often best to gift smaller increments of miles, given their high prices. Therefore, if you know someone who’s just a few thousand miles short of their dream trip, gifting them the difference in miles is an effective and thoughtful way to help them.

Gifting miles for short-haul economy trips is another way for your recipient to get maximum usage out of your gift. Short-haul domestic trips often cost between just 3,000 to 10,000 miles one-way, depending on the airline, class and season, making it a more reasonable cost to cover. So, if you know your recipient is planning a trip within the United States, gifting them the miles for the flights can be the perfect surprise.

Make the Most of Mile Gifting

As nice as a new piece of clothing or a coupon for a restaurant is, they’re hardly original gift ideas. Spice things up at the next celebration and give your family member or friend the gift of miles. Whether you buy them miles, an airline gift card or directly book the award fare on their behalf using your own points and miles, it’s guaranteed to be a gift they’ll never forget.