Frequent flyers miles may not be frequent!

I recently found out the hard way that airlines do not always offer frequent flyers all, or in some cases, any of the miles they’ve actually flown.  Specifically, I flew on United Airlines to Europe and the outbound leg of the trip was on Lufthansa, United’s partner airline.  However, after not receiving timely credit of my frequent flyer miles, I called United and was told that in some instances miles are not awarded because of the class of flight booked.  Now, I’m not talking about booking first-class vs. economy.  Even within the classes, for example, within economy, seats are further classified by certain letters of the alphabet.  Depending on the seat you book, you may be awarded 50%, or, no frequent flyer miles at all from the partner Lufthansa.  You will not know about this until it happens to you because this information is available in the contract between the partners United and Lufthansa.  Average passengers will obviously never see this document and without this information, can unknowingly book a seat that awards no miles.  Beware!  If you do your bookings on line, check with airline before you finalize (or absolutely within 24 hours after ticketing) to make sure that your booking qualifies for the miles.  Don’t be left in the dark as I was, now having to haggle with United Airlines’ President & CEO and customer service to be credited with the miles.

Written by Screenname TriniDiva (a.k.a. NSL-R) on 6/2/12. All photos taken by and are property of TriniDiva (a.k.a. NSL-R)