Full Fares – Earning bonus Elite miles on United Partners
As I discussed in my last blog post, if you book a full-fare or flexible-fare economy ticket that is booked as a Y or a B fare, you will earn 150% of the miles flown on the trip. This is not a reason to buy these tickets as they can cost several times the cost of a regular ticket, but if you do get booked into this fare class, it is good to know if you will or will not earn the 150% miles. It is not a given, as I will come to shortly. If you need a flexible ticket due to fluid plans or you like me, book last minute travel or one-way tickets, you may get booked into these fares.
Other than Y/B, if one purchases full-fare Business Class or First Class fares, there is the 150% mileage bonuses for that too. These bonuses can be up to 200% for Award miles (RDM), but remain 150% for Elite miles. Conversely, if you purchase discounted Business or First tickets, you may not earn any bonus Elite miles. These fares are actually sometimes cheaper than Y/B fares, so it makes sense.
In this blog post, I will list out which airline partners award the 150% miles on full fare Economy, Business and First fares when earning miles on United MileagePlus program. I only researched this program as this is my primary mileage program. Furthermore, I only looked at United’s Star Alliance Partners. United has several other partners outside Star Alliance, like India’s Jet Airways, but they do not award Elite miles to United flyers, so I ignored them for now.
I personally found this data useful. I recently flew Turkish Airlines from Istanbul to London (IST – LHR) on my way back to the US. it was a B-fare, but I earned no bonus, as Turkish does not award it. If I had known this fact, I may have explored flying on Lufthansa instead and return to the US via Frankfurt instead of via London, as Lufthansa does offer 150% EQM.
On a side note, I was surprised actually to find out how many airlines do not have a First class product. Just Economy and Business class. United does so too on some of its international flights that are only 2-class: Economy and BusinessFirst.
Here is the list. The format of this is such:
<Airline Name> – <150% on Y/B fares in Economy>, <150% on full-fare in Business Class>, <150% on full-fare in First Class>
Highlighted airlines (in bold) offer 150% EQM on Y/B economy fares.
- United – Yes, Yes, Yes (of course)
[To decode – United awards 150% EQM on full fare Economy, Business and First fares]
- Adria – No, No (No F)
- Aegean – No, No (No F)
- Air Canada – Yes, Yes, Yes
- Air China – No, No, No
- Air India – No, Yes, Yes
- Air New Zealand – No, No (No F)
- ANA – Yes, Yes, Yes
- Asiana Airlines – No, No, No
- Austrian – Yes, No/Yes, Yes (Some Business fares earn 150% EQM, and some do not)
- Avianca – No, No, (No, F)
- Brussels Airlines – Yes, Yes, (No F)
- Copa Airlines – Yes (125%), Yes (150%, 175%), (No F) (Full fare Economy only earns 125%, and Some Business fares earn 150% EQM, and some earn 175%)
- Croatia Airlines – No, No, (No F)
- Egyptair – No, No, No
- Ethiopian Airlines – No, No, (No F)
- Eva Air – No, No, (No F)
- LOT Polish Airlines – No, No, (No F)
- Lufthansa – Yes, No, Yes, No, Yes, Yes (multiple yes/no combinations here. Lufthansa has a Premium Economy class on some aircraft. This earns the 150% miles for some fares. Same is true for Business class).
- SAS – Yes, Yes, (No F)
- Shenzhen Airlines – No, No, No
- Singapore Airlines – No, No, No, No
- South African Airlines – No, No, (No F)
- Swiss – Yes, Yes, Yes
- TAP Portugal – No, No, (No F)
- THAI – No, No, No
- Turkish Airlines – No, No (No F)
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