Photo: biggaju (Shutterstock)
When you’re flying on a paid airline ticket, you have options when it comes to how many and what type of airline miles you can earn. Many airlines are members of an alliance and almost all have some kind of partnership with other airlines. Most of the time, you can credit the miles from a paid flight to the airline you’re flying or to a partner airline. This can seriously increase the number of miles you can earn, if you know how to do it the right way. Here’s how to make sure you’re earning as many miles as possible.
Understand airline alliances and partnerships
The three big airline alliances are Oneworld, SkyTeam, and Star Alliance. If you fly with an airline that’s a member of one of these alliances, you’ll have the option to credit your miles to another airline in the alliance. For example, if you fly United (a Star Alliance member) but know that Turkish Airlines (another Star Alliance member) offers some incredible sweet spots you want to take advantage of, you can credit that flight on United to Turkish and earn Turkish Miles&Smiles instead.
Some airlines also partner with other airlines that aren’t in the same alliance, and you can often credit your flights to these non-alliance partners, as well.
Know the fare code for your flight
In order to figure out how many miles you can earn for a flight, you need to know what the fare code is for your flight. The fare code isn’t just economy, business or first class (these are referred to as the fare class). Rather, the fare code is a one letter designator like “B,” “M,” or “K.” Your fare code will determine how many miles you earn for your flight.
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Finding the fare code can sometimes be a challenge. In the best case scenario, your fare code will be located on your confirmation email. If that’s not the case, you have a couple of options. You can visit matrix.itasoftware.com and search for your flight. ITA Matrix is not a flight booking engine, but it is a flight search engine. When you click through to the final page, the fare code will be displayed. However, this only works if you look up the fare code at time of booking. After booking, there’s no guarantee that seats in the same “fare bucket” will still be available.
If you forgot to look up the fare code at time of booking and it’s not in your confirmation email, your best bet is to contact the airline and ask. You can call them or reach out to the airline through social media (especially Twitter).
Look up your options on wheretocredit.com
After you know what the fare code is, it’s time to look up how many miles you can earn with various airlines, and wheretocredit.com is the best place to do that—enter the operating airline you’re flying with and the fare code that you looked up in the previous step.
Screenshot: Where to Credit
Where to Credit will give you a table listing the airlines you can choose to credit that flight to and the amount of miles you’ll earn—typically in either a percentage of the total miles flown or a rate of miles earned per dollar spent.
Here’s a tip: If you don’t know how many miles your flight is, visit gcmap.com and type in your route. Great Circle Mapper will give you an estimate of flight distance (which may vary slightly from how the airline calculates distance). From here, you’ll be able to compare the number of miles you can earn with a bunch of different programs.
Other things to consider
Keep accessibility and miles value in mind. Not all miles are created equal, and not all miles are as easy to access. While one airline may offer an earning rate that’s 30% higher, the miles may be worth 50% less or difficult to get more of. You’ll want to factor this in before deciding which program to credit to.Don’t spread yourself too thin. Consider the number of programs you already have miles with—it’s important not to spread yourself too thin across too many programs because miles aren’t worth anything until you have enough to redeem for an award. Remember that the cheapest flight isn’t always the cheapest. While you may be able to get a cheaper flight by flying on a certain airline, it’s important to remember that the cheapest flight isn’t always the cheapest after you account for the value of the miles earned. This is especially true when considering whether or not to fly a low cost carrier (LCC), as LCCs typically don’t have rewarding frequent flyer programs. There can even be cases where the net cost of a business class flight after considering the value of the miles earned can be close to the cost of flying economy—if you find an example like that, treat yourself!
