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While many AwardWallet readers are naturally inclined to redeem points and miles for their travels, booking paid flights are often still required. Unless you collect miles in a single program, you could wind up with small balances spread across several frequent flyer programs. By understanding airline partnerships and how the type of ticket purchased will credit, your revenue flight will earn you the right type of miles to meet your award travel goals.
The problem with having miles spread over multiple programs is that it’s hard to accumulate sufficient miles for even economy award tickets, let alone the more aspirational redemptions like flying in the world's best first class seats. While AwardWallet can help keep track of your account balances, you generally can’t combine miles from different programs to pay for an award ticket (except if you're earning Avios).
By picking a limited number of airlines to credit to, you're not only maximizing your purchase to earn that next award — but you might even help yourself earn airline status faster.
So, how do you credit flying activity to certain programs — and why should you? Let's talk about it.
Page Contents
When Should You Credit Airline Miles to Partner Frequent Flyer Programs?
Let’s say you fly American Airlines regularly. You're most likely an AAdvantage® member, and your frequent flyer account is added to your booking when you sign into American's website or app to complete your reservation. If this is the case, you're likely earning AA miles (and Loyalty Points) on your travels. But what happens when you travel overseas and fly another route that American doesn't service?
For example, suppose you catch a revenue flight on British Airways traveling between London, England, and Nice, France. British Airways offers a frequent flyer program called Executive Club. You could sign up for an account and credit your flight to British Airways, earning Avios. But you would be left with a small, unusable balance stuck in a program you can’t transfer points out of (outside of other Avios-earning airlines), and those Avios will expire after 36 months whether there is account activity or not. That's a small problem.
Credit your flights to a program you can make a redemption through
In this case, crediting those miles back to your more-used AAdvantage account makes more sense — the flying you'll do will to the balance you already have. You can do this because American Airlines and British Airways belong to the same Oneworld alliance. Like alliance membership, or sometimes extensive partnerships between carriers, generally means you can take flights with one alliance airline and credit to another.
Additionally, there are a whole bunch of other partners of British Airways that you could credit to, including Alaska Airlines. While the right program to credit this example flight depends on your situation, you'll want to take away the fact that keeping your flying within partners of your preferred airlines can help you earn miles you'll use toward award travel even faster.
You can focus all your mileage-earning capacity on a handful of programs that provide top value. The trick is to select frequent flyer programs that offer excellent redemption value and are transfer partners of one or more flexible points programs. Doing so allows you to top off your account using points that are easier to accumulate.
Related: How Many Miles Do You Need for a Free Flight?
How Do You Credit Miles to a Partner Frequent Flyer Program?
For almost any paid flight, you have several ways to credit miles to partner frequent flyer programs. If you’re booking directly through the airline, you can typically add your frequent flyer number during the booking process when you enter the passenger details portion of the reservation.
If for some reason, the system doesn’t accept your number, or there isn’t an option to add your frequent flyer number to the booking, you can call the ticketing airline after the ticket is confirmed and have the frequent flyer number added to the reservation manually.
You can also add the number at the airport when you pass through check-in or at the gate, and if all else fails, you can try to claim the miles retrospectively after you’ve completed the flight.
When Does It Make Sense to Credit Miles to Partner Programs?
Perhaps the most challenging part of the equation is working out where to credit your miles. How many miles you receive in the partner program depends on the fare bucket of the ticket you’ve purchased, typically shown in the “Flight Details” section of your confirmation email as “Booking Class” and a single letter, as shown in the picture below. Depending on your airline, this can sometimes be difficult to find.
Our favorite resource when deciding where to credit miles is WhereToCredit.com. This website will give you a bird's eye view of the miles you'll earn on a given airline in a given fare class across several programs to which you could potentially credit your flight.
To use the free WhereToCredit service, select your airline and booking class and hit “Show Me.” The results will display the miles you’ll receive when crediting to different partner programs.
The percentage of miles you receive differs between fare buckets, and some discount fares won’t receive any miles at all on partners. To get the most accurate results, you’ll need to know the booking class of the fare — so be sure to have this handy before you start researching. Below is a breakdown of how you could earn on British Airways “J” class (business class) tickets:
Based on this table, on of the programs most worth crediting the British Airways “J” class fare to is Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan. The fare appears to earn 350% redeemable miles (RDM) based on distance flown — or even more if you have Mileage Plan elite status. Conversely, SriLankan Airlines FlySmiLes, Royal Jordanian Royal Club, and several others might be worth passing on.
Verify what you see in WhereToCredit with your airline of choice
No matter what, it's worth confirming what you see in the WhereToCredit table matches what you see on your airline of choice's website. For example, the American Airlines earnings in the “J” class fare breakdown are inaccurate. American awards miles for British Airways flights based on how much you spend, not how far you fly.
Ultimately, if it comes down to picking a revenue-based program and a distance-based program for which to credit your flight, you'll need to consider your ticket's price to ensure you earn the best rewards.
At the very least, WhereToCredit can give you a good idea of which programs will give you the most (and least) rewards, and you can use the information you gather to do a bit more research before making an official decision on where to credit.
Other considerations on where to credit flights
Something to consider before you decide where to credit is whether the program you credit to partners with flexible rewards programs. Transferable points provide ultimate versatility and allow you to top off accounts when aiming for a specific redemption. If the program you credit towards has more than one big transfer partner, it will be easier to top off your balance than if you need to earn the miles within that frequent flyer program’s ecosystem.
Another circumstance that warrants crediting miles to partner programs is whether you're chasing elite status. Crediting miles to your preferred frequent flyer program allows you to leverage flights on partner airlines to achieve elite status with your chosen airline.
In the example of the British Airways-Alaska Airlines flight, you'll also earn elite-qualifying miles on your “J” class fare, which helps you unlock Mileage Plan elite status.
Related: How To Consolidate Transferable Points for an Award Ticket
Final Thoughts
Crediting airline miles to the right frequent flyer partner significantly impacts the number of usable miles you bank. Like most things in award travel, it’s best to have a plan and know in advance to which airlines you want to credit miles. That way, you don't end up with a small stash of miles in an account you can't put to good use.
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Wheretocredit is a great reference site to use.
Now this is a good website to know about! I’m always looking at the best place to credit miles. I even use another site about the shopping portals that I got from you guys. It’s awesome and an easy way for me to see the best place to get miles credited. Now I have another tool in my arsenal. Thank you! Plus, it looks like it stays up to date on changes with partners too, since I see the Alaska and American changes on there under the notes.
Thanks. I like that website.
Partner mileage earning is a great benefit. Makes earning easier.
Wheretocredit is a great site for quick reference before pulling the trigger on those super error fares!
I love that website. It’s so incredibly helpful at determining mileage credit. I always try to credit to my preferred program but hate it when a flight is listed as 0% accrual rate.
I actually just did this for the first time. Credited an AA flight to AS to save for my Australia trip!
Thanks for the post!
Don’t make the same mistake I did… transferred amex MR to ANA to get on a BC waitlist only to have ANA not give me the award tickets even though there are 20+ seats available.
The seats went out empty?
I guess you’re stuck with the miles now?
What I do is to save my boarding passes till I’m sure the miles are credited. But, like the article advises, I always try to enter my frequent flier # while booking. For example, I entered my Delta # while booking Alitalia flights, and that worked for me.
This is one of my favorite resources. On our big overseas trips, we usually book with miles for the long haul, but pay cash for the short flights during the trip as we explore a region. This site has been very helpful when flying on regional airlines in a region we may never visit again so we don’t feel like we “wasted” the miles.
Recently I’ve used Wheretocredit, to find the best option(s) for crediting revenue flights we’ve booked on some relatively obscure regional carriers, and some less obscure foreign carriers, with great success. It’s really a terrific resource.
Really helpful tips, particularly the Wheretocredit.com site. I’ll be referencing that in the future!
Some great tips, thanks!
If you are not loyal to one airline, it is often best to keep one account from each major alliance. Alaska Airlines also have a wide variety of partners.
I always use wheretocredit to check which program to use.
great info. just discovered this site, thanks
great advice
thanks for the info
Thanks for the info. This is getting really complicated to optimise
Very important to consolidate miles. The first place I check is wheretocredit
I’m just learning more about flexible programs and their obvious benefits… wow, a whole new world of point programs and things to consider. Life was so much simpler before, but my points are not nearly so useful and usable being locked into one program. I just wish i could remember all the details covered in these article blogs.
I knew about the where-to-credit-Page..but i don’t get how it works…Like, having a LH-Flight in N – it says 125% – but 125% of what?
125% of miles flown.
Thank goodness for airline alliances and partnerships!
thanks for the info
Thanks for the tip. I guess that I have just been letting earned miles just expire on these one off airlines that I have flown in the past. I will look into WhereToCredit.com going forward.
As have many of us. 🙁 Good to know of a way to plan ahead and avoid the one off complete losses.
Very useful article! I am likely going to book a flight in the next few days and I’m chasing status on American Airlines. The suggestion of wheretocredit.com will really help me out. Thanks!
If you are chasing status on one airline, that really helps make it easier to decide where to credit, as you send everything you can towards that airline.
Thanks for the useful information on where to credit miles. I never knew about this website.
Thanks for “WhereToCredit.com”. I’m going to bookmark that resource.