Hidden Chase Sapphire Preferred benefit: Continental / United mile transfer
Chase offers two Sapphire cards: its base no annual fee Sapphire, and the $95 annual fee Chase Sapphire Preferred.
The Preferred card carries a largely unadvertised but valuable benefit: the ability to transfer your miles 1:1 into Continental’s OnePass miles program, our top rated miles program.
In addition, because United have merged, you can now freely transfer points between your Continental and United accounts on the internet, instantly, with no charge at this United Airlines link.
Continental and United each belong to the Star Alliance, the world’s largest airline alliance. That means you can use your miles to book travel not just on Continental and United, but also on US Airways, Air Canada, Adria, Aegean, Air China, Air New Zealand, ANA, Asiana, Austrian, Blue 1, BMI, Brussels, Croatia, Egyptair, LOT Polish, Lufthansa, Scandanavian, Singapore, South African, Spanair, Swiss, TAM Brazil, TAP Portugal, Thai, and Turkish Airlines.
This maximizes the ability for to be able to score a valuable award with the dates and places you want to travel. It’s also helpful if you’re a Continental or United frequent flyer who wants to top off miles in an existing account.
You can redeem on airlines representing nearly 50% of the world’s flight capacity
You can also transfer points 1:1 into British Airways, Amtrak, Hyatt, Priority Club, or Marriott points. At first, you might think “I live in the US, why do I care about British Airways miles?”
The reason they are useful is their airline partners in the OneWorld alliance. You can use British Airways miles to travel on American Airlines, Qantas, Cathay Pacific, Finnair, Iberia, Japan Air Lines, LAN, Malev, Mexicana, Royal Jordanian, and S7 Airlines.
Combined with the Continental/United’s Star Alliance partners, your miles can be used for flights on airlines that represent nearly half of the world’s airline capacity.
Learn more about the Chase Sapphire Preferred’s other benefits here.
How the transfer to Continental/United and others works
Simply logon to your Chase rewards account online — select the ‘Transfer Points to Travel Partners’, then enter the number of points you want to transfer in 1,000 point increments. You’ll be prompted for the account number of the mileage program you are transfering into, along with your name. The points will be transferred within 5 business days, though often much sooner.
Hi.
A great blog. Thanks for posting.
I have about150k miles on AA account.
I understand I can transfer my sapphire points 1:1 to my BA account (0 miles),
would I have total 200k points on AA account bcoz AA and BA are under one-world alliance?
Please explain.
Thanks
@shoaib- Unforutnately, no you can’t combine American and British Airways miles. You would have to redeem the miles for tickets separately from each account, though you could say use the AA miles for one ticket, and the BA miles for another, even on the same flight because of the alliance.
do the points to miles transfer have to be in an account that is in the same name? My mom has a sapphire card but we been collecting points on the united card. Was thinking of switching to the sapphire card because of the better benefits, but it’s useless if her card can’t transfer in my name.
@ami – Yes, you can transfer to anyone’s United Mileage Plus account.
Is there any fees associated with the mileages transferring?
@Tuan No, there are no fees associated with transferring points into miles.
The Continental OnePass program is being replaced by the United MileagePlus program starting January 2010. Any idea if the 1:1 miles transfer will still work in this case?