Dear Gary,

I'm a huge fan of yours and hope you might be able to shed insight on what seems like a code-share mileage scam:

A colleague of mine at Conde Nast Traveler Magazine made a business trip to Sydney, Australia -- she flew American Airlines from New York to L.A. and American's code-share partner Qantas from L.A. to Sydney -- and Qantas won't give her American AAdvantage miles!

When my colleague Brook booked the flight, she surfed the Web to find the best air fare and found one lower than what our umbrella company's corporate travel agent--whom we're forced to book through--had found. (This isn't hard). The agent was able to get Brook the lower fare by keeping her on the exact same flights the agent had chosen, but moving the reservation from American to Qantas. Brook gave the agent her American AAdvantage number and expected to earn 12,000 miles. But, a few weeks later, the only mileage that had shown up in Brook's AAdvantage account was for the Sydney-to-New York return trip. Brook called American, whose rep explained that her fare was in a class that Qantas deemed ineligible for partner frequent-flier miles -- even though part of the itinerary was on American!

So why was Brook getting mileage for the return trip but not the outbound? Brook had postponed her return flight for a day while she was in Sydney (at no extra cost). For some mysterious reason, this seems to have made her return flight eligible for miles, while the outbound flight booked by the travel agent was not.

The American rep told Brook that there is no recourse, short of signing up for Qantas's frequent-flier program.

I would love to hear whatever explanation you might have for this mileage weirdness. (I also just warned travelers about it on my blog at cntraveler.com/perrinpost; you are welcome to comment there if you prefer.)

Many thanks,
Wendy Perrin
Consumer News Editor
Conde Nast Traveler Magazine
cntraveler.com/perrinpost

Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)

URL:
Remember me? YesNo

Comments: