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Just over a year ago, Miles & More, the frequent flyer scheme for Lufthansa/Austrian/Swiss, added mileage pooling. This feature allowed two adults and up to five children to ‘pool’ their balances. You could then use the ‘household balance’ for award travel. But Miles & More never allowed members to transfer miles between accounts.

Miles & More has just added a new feature, making it possible to TRANSFER miles between any two accounts – BUT for a hefty fee. Here’s what I was offered:

Whilst I wouldn’t advise you pay these fees, it could be worthwhile if you are a few miles short for an award booking. It’s certainly an interesting option to know about.

So how does it work?

In case you do decide to transfer miles, it’s a fairly easy and straightforward process. Just head over to the dedicated website (click here), and log in with your usual Miles & More credentials.

Once you are signed in, choose the amount of miles you’d like to transfer and fill in the recipient’s name, email address and Miles & More number. Pay the fee and you are all set.  It takes 2 to 3 days for the miles to appear in the recipient’s account.

Note the following important restrictions apply:

• Transfer up to 35,000 miles to recipient’s account per the calendar year.

• No recipient may receive more than 35,000 miles from any other Miles & More account or combination of account in any calendar year.

• Minimum transfer can be 1,000 miles per account.

• Miles once transferred or transferred fees paid are non-refundable.

• Mileage rates and other applicable fees are subject to change

Bottom Line

Adding a facility to let members transfer miles is long overdue, in my opinion. So I’m glad that Miles & More is finally making this feature available.

But, and it is a big but, there are some important downsides. Cost is the most obvious. I can’t really see many circumstances in which it makes sense to pay £134 to transfer 15,000 miles to someone else’s account.

I am just 15,000 miles short of the 290,000 required for a three-region First award that I have been eyeing for some time. But I am still debating whether I should wait or pay the fee to transfer over some miles from my brother’s account. I must say that I much prefer BA here. Say what you will about BA, but their household accounts do allow you to share miles with extended family…

A second obvious downside is that you can only transfer 35,000 miles per calendar year. Pretty useless if you are after a First class award but don’t have that big a stash of M&M miles to begin with…

Let me know down in the comments what you make of this.