Do You Earn Miles On Flights Booked With Miles?

Introduction

For those who use their frequent flyer miles to book an award ticket, one important inquiry is whether they would be credited with miles for the particular flight they are taking. The short response to the question is that it depends or rather that it depends on the policy of the particular airline loyalty program in question. Overall, all the major carriers that exist in the United States have a policy that enables passengers to accrue what they refer to as ‘Redemption Miles’ whenever they book award tickets. But it is important to know that the total miles that one can accumulate are often much lower than they would if one purchased a normal ticket. In the next steps, we describe how the leading US composite carriers from Table 2 approach the mileage accrual when award tickets are involved.

Earning American AAdvantage Miles: Frequently Asked Questions

When it comes to flights that are booked with AAdvantage miles, it is possible for a traveler to miles on award tickets with American Airlines. However, the redeemable miles earned are based only on some proportion of the paid ticket equivalent for a fare. For most of the discounted economy class tickets, you are likely to get a dismal 5 percentof the value of the actual paid ticket as the redeemable miles. When using full-fare first or business class award tickets you can get up to seven, five, three or a two percent mileage rebate. Given that award tickets inherently involve fairly large amounts of miles, a reward of only 5-25% is not exactly very generous. However, any amount of redeemable miles is still something. But as long as you are fully cognizant of the fact that earning rates are significantly lower than paid tickets when using AAdvantage miles to purchase flights.

Delta SkyMiles Earning Rules

Among the major US airlines, Delta Airlines has one of the most stringent policies in terms of qualifying for SkyMiles when traveling on award tickets. If you do find an award flight using SkyMiles whether on economy, premium economy or the first class, you will not get a single redeemable SkyMiles once you have booked the flight. Of course, in the case of Delta’s policy, the company’s position is that to book the flight with your SkyMiles balance, you have earned the required number of miles, thus there is no need to accumulate the additional miles. However, even though present across all fare buckets, it is actually lack of earning SkyMiles on award travel which may be disadvantageous to many loyal flyers always seeking to earn more miles.

United MileagePlus Earning Rules

However, similar to other programs, such as American Airlines, United MileagePlus does permit the earning of what is referred to as Premier Qualifying Miles (PQMs) as well as Premier Qualifying Segments (PQSs) when someone books a flight with miles. But it is the same with American and the impression that one can earn quite a lot of PQMs is only a tiny fraction compared to the amount one gets from the paid ticket fare. With regard to the discount economy awards, you will be eligible to earn 5 percent of the PQMs as a proportion of paid ticket prices. On full-fare first and business class, award redemptions, members can be awarded anywhere between 50 to 125 PQM percent of the paid ticket rate. Hence if you require to boost the Premier elite status metrics or just wish to make some extra miles in the account, then you can accomplish the same by booking United award flights. However, the mileage earned will still be substantially lower than the kind of fares one can acquire through paid spaces.

It is important that one gets to understand the rules of earning JetBlue TrueBlue Points as thereby they shall be in a position to earn more points and get value for their money.

Thus, JetBlue Airlines can be noted to be relatively more encouraging having a relatively liberal policy when offering travelers an opportunity to earn TrueBlue points when they make booking with their points. In revenue bookings, JetBlue ensures that the customer earns at least 200 points on every eligible one-way flight while in award bookings, the same point earning applies. Award tickets in economy class guarantee a minimum of 300 points regardless of whether your one-way flight is 500 miles or more. For Mint business class awards bookings, JetBlue minimum guarantee point’s earning is 500 point per one-way. Apart from that, the accrual of TrueBlue points in award tickets is reasonable based on a percentage of the paid fare as observed with other global airlines. Therefore, as long as you do not get paid bookings where you are awarded full points, JetBlue will reward award travelers better than most competitors.

Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan Earning Rules 1. 0 Introduction Alaska Airlines is an American airline based in Alaska and operates within the United States of America and other international destinations.

Members of the Alaska Airlines’ and affiliated partners’ frequent flyer program known as the Mileage Plan can earn what the airline refers to as Redeemable Miles when they purchase award tickets with the Alaska miles. As always, the Redeemable Miles are earned in accordance with the small percentage of the ticket price that has been paid, and depending on the ticket type purchased and your elite status membership in Mileage Plan. At the bottom of the Elite Spectrum for the remaining non-Elite members, full redeposit Rebate – Redeemable Miles are granted at the rate of five percent of the paid fare cost on the economy class award tickets with discounts. First-class and full-fare economy tickets allow members to earn 10% back in Redeemable Miles for the fare paid for travel, with basic and gold members being excluded. This means that the MVP Gold 75K elite fliers get the most favorable redeemable miles rates that stand at 25 percent of the ticket cost, regardless of the type of award ticket being booked. Therefore, Alaska is more generous than some airlines but is equally selective when awarding or limiting the redemption of miles for an award as against a paid trip.

There are certain rules that govern earning of Southwest Rapid Rewards as explained in this passage:

Southwest Airlines has one of the most unconventional frequent flyer programs around the globe because every fare type earns points based on the flight price excluding taxes only. Likewise, members of the Rapid Rewards will earn points on bookings made with award itinerary. Even if you are booking a flight using points earned for an award flight in Southwest Airlines, you are still rewarded according to the base fare price of the flight. By earning points on awards, it remains the same regardless of whether booking economy fares or Business Select tickets. For instance, let’s assume you are considering redeeming your points to take a short-haul award flight that would otherwise cost $100 but you are to do so in the Wanna Get Away fare. That fare of $100 would have awarded you 500 Rapid Reward points that you can use to redeem various items. Making that flight as a points award does not alter the earning factors in any way. You will still get 500 points as if you had paid for that fare as you will be awarded points as per your booking status. Because of that, Southwest is very lenient with the option of allowing members to earn points twice when they make award travel.

The Bottom Line

However, the good news is that most airlines allow for some form of mileage or points to be earned for flights redeemed with FF miles but the earnings are always limited. Southwest Rewards is unique in that it does not limit the amount of points earned on award tickets to the extent that paid fares are not restricted in any manner. Nevertheless, recovering even a couple of percentage points in the form of redeemable miles is also a plus from the airlines including American, United, Alaska, and JetBlue. Just make sure that when you are redeeming flights with miles, you read the award travel earning rates page because it is never as attractive as booking paid tickets.