How to Find the Most Lucrative Airline to Credit Miles
Earn the most lucrative amount of miles so you can visit beautiful Bled, Slovenia! Photo by: Evan Berman
There are two main types of travellers: business and leisure. Business travellers are those who often fly for work and usually will qualify for elite status in one or more airlines naturally. Leisure travellers generally do not earn elite status through “butt-in-seat” means– that is, they do not fly enough with one airline for work to earn status that way. Whether or not a leisure traveller earns status is irrelevant, the point is that he or she doesn’t care enough about one airline to be loyal. I’ll cover the tips and tricks to earning elite status with various airlines in a future article, but today let’s talk about what to do if you do not care about status.
Earnings on Flights:
Every time you purchase a ticket you have the ability to earn miles, either with the airline that operates the flight or a partner airline. I previously wrote an article on airline alliances and partnerships. So, when you fly United, you can earn miles with United, Lufthansa, Avianca, Turkish, or any other Star Alliance member. The same goes for Delta, miles can be earned with Delta, Air France/KLM, AeroMexico, Korean Air, or any other SkyTeam member. With those basics out of the way, let’s get into specific examples and how to decide where to credit a flight.
Enter Where to Credit:
Frequent readers of this site know that I often make mention of where I’ve credited flights. When I do so, I refer to the website wheretocredit.com. While the site puts a disclaimer that there may be other airlines to credit, I’ve found that the results are usually accurate and complete.
I recently purchased tickets to fly on both United and Delta. Let’s take a look at each of them in turn and see how this plays out in reality.
Example #1 (Star Alliance):
As mentioned above, I recently flew on United from Charleston to Seattle, with a stop in Chicago (CHS-ORD-SEA). The screenshot of the itinerary is below:
What is important to take away here is the fact that I was flying on United in K Class (Economy) within the US.
Where to Credit:
After booking, I went to wheretocredit.com and searched for info on the best option. This is the resulting buffet of options and what would be earned with each:
All that matters here is the RDM column (on the left). The earning of miles is calculated by the mileage flown multiplied by the percentage listed. For example the 50% and 25% award 50% and 25% of the mileage flown, respectively.
GC Map:
To calculate the distance flown, I use GC Map. The distance listed may be slightly different than the airline’s own calculations but it is a good ballpark.
Here is the GC Map listing for CHS-ORD-SEA
Calculating the Returns:
With United, I would earn 5x miles per $ spent. That is, $166.69*5= 833.45 miles.
I ended up crediting these flights to Avianca LifeMiles. One of the many loyalty programs that awards 50% of mileage flown for K Class, I value these much more highly than all other options excluding Turkish. Given that both flights were in K Class, the calculation is 760*0.5= 380 miles for the CHS-ORD flight and 1,721*0.5= 860 miles for the ORD-SEA flight. In total, that is 1,240 United miles, more than 833 for earning with United. As you can see below, those were the exact amounts that I earned:
Example #2 (SkyTeam):
Next up, I also had a recent Delta flight. While I have entry-level Delta Silver Status this year, I will not be requalifying and have instead opted to earn more valuable miles.
I flew Delta from New York (JFK) to Phoenix (PHX). The itinerary is below:
The important takeaway here is I flew U Class Economy with Delta.
Where to Credit:
Once again, I went to wheretocredit.com and searched for info on the best option. This is the resulting buffet of options and what would be earned with each:
There’s a big difference this time, Korean Air is the obvious answer. Delta is only offering 5x per $ spent, not 100% of miles flown. Czech Airlines is tiny and offers a fixed rate even though the listing might seem to indicate otherwise.
GC Map:
Once again, I looked up the distance between the two cities. Since there is a 100% mileage earning rate, I earned 2,153 miles. That is much better than Delta’s 208.11*7= 1,457 miles. Note that I earn 7x per $ due to elite status. If you are a member, you would earn only 5x per $ spent. Another no-brainer!
Summary:
Whenever you book a paid flight with an airline that is not one with which you care to earn elite status, it’s important to decide that program will earn you the most redeemable miles. Simply visit Where to Credit and enter the airline and gate. Next, determine the length of the flight (distance) and multiply by the factor. Then, compare that total with the amount you would earn by crediting the flight to the site that you are booking with. Happy earning!
How do you know that Korean will offer flights you need/want some day? Is that through the alliance web they might have?
That’s a great question (and well worth a deeper dive in a separate article)! For now, suffice it to say two things: Korean Air is no longer a transfer partner of any transferable points (AmEx, Chase, Citi, and Capital One, though Marriott Bonvoy does transfer 3-to-1) and they have some great sweet spots. Remember: usually 100% of the miles flown is credited in award miles so if you fly transcontinental Delta paid flights often, you can rack up miles quickly!
Want to fly first class to South Korea (or elsewhere in Asia)? 80k miles one-way is a great deal! Business Class to Australia (with a layover in Seoul) can be had for 97.5k miles each way. Flying round trip to anywhere in South America can be had for 50k miles in economy or 110k miles in business.
You might not get there tomorrow, but these miles don’t expire for 10 years. If you have 15-20 paid roundtrip transcontinental Delta flights, you can earn enough miles to fly first class to Asia, that’s a great deal!