Questions and Answers

In light of all the new revenue-earning requirements for some US carriers (and now Air Canada) what mileage program do you recommend we credit “butt-in-seat miles” to when flying US carriers (Delta, United, American)? Thanks so much for any help and insight!

@Robby–you’ll have to check your fare class and do the math to see what is attractive for any given flight. You’ll also want to consider where you’d be able to top up an account at a reasonable price to so as to be able to use the miles.

Just as a point of clarification, Air Canada is not going revenue based for mileage earning, just for status qualification. Ben discusses it here: [URL]http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/2015/11/24/air-canada-status-revenue-requirement/[/URL]

As Gaurav stated its totally dependant on the flight, the ticketed class and how you’d want to use your miles.

As it stands now, I’d credit eligible AA flights to AS (unless I cared about AA status) once the revenue earning kicks in. I imagine we’ll see earning rates on AA flights credited to AS devalued but unless the earning devaluation is drastic I’d still probably do it because I don’t foresee a big devaluation on AS redemptions and redemption rates on AS will be way better than AA. Same thing for Delta because I don’t really see myself traveling anywhere SkyTeam partners are necessary and if I did I’d just transfer Chase UR to KE or Amex MR to AF. For United crediting to CM or SQ can both be good values.

This really is a complex question that has to be answered on a case by case basis on where you see yourself doing most of your traveling.