United just made it possible to pool your MileagePlus miles with up to 5 people — here’s how it works

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United just introduced a positive enhancement to its MileagePlus loyalty program: mileage pooling. Now, members can pool their United MileagePlus miles, making it easier than ever to redeem miles across accounts.

With United’s new MileagePlus mileage pooling, groups of up to five members can link their accounts together to share and redeem miles. There’s also no set requirement as to who can join the pool, which means the pool can include those outside of the household as well.

As a parent, this is a huge added feature and will help my family redeem for more free award flights. With some family members, such as my children, having small account balances, we can now actually utilize those miles.

How to create a MileagePlus pool

Creating a MileagePlus pool is free and there’s no cost for members to pool their miles. The only requirement is that the pool leader must be over 18 years old, but additional members can be of any age so long as they have an active MileagePlus account.

There’s also no maximum number of miles that can be contributed to the pool. And unlike some programs that offer pooling, such as JetBlue TrueBlue, you aren’t forced to share all of your miles. This works well with groups who are looking to vacation together, where just the number of miles needed can be contributed.

A member can also leave the pool at any time, however, they can’t join another pool for another 90 days. Additionally, a new member can’t join the existing pool for the same time period.

One thing to note, however, is if a member leaves a pool, they can’t take with them any unredeemed miles that were initially contributed — they’ll stay in the pool to be used for the current pool members. Best practice after joining a pool is to only contribute right before you’re looking book an award flight.

It’s important to know, however, that miles redeemed from the pool can only be utilized on United-operated flights. This means if you’re looking to book flights on partner airlines, that’s not possible with the current set up.

Bottom line

This is a great step forward for United travelers. Being able to pull miles from more sources will only help when it comes to redeeming for award travel. And while United isn’t the first airline to implement a pooling miles program, it’s definitely a pioneer in the space — especially for US-based airlines.

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