When you will earn miles on a flight and when you won’t – Daily News

By Jason Steele, Bankrate

For decades, one of the perks airline travelers have enjoyed most is the ability to earn frequent flyer miles and redeem them for an award flight or other rewards.

Whether you get them via a travel credit card, an airline loyalty program or both, earning frequent flyer miles can be a great way to fund one or more vacations each year.

But not all airline bookings earn miles, and it’s not always easy to know in advance which are eligible.

Here’s when you should expect to earn miles on your flight, when you won’t, and how the best rewards credit cards can help ensure you’re getting the best return for your spending.

When will you earn miles on a flight?

Not every ticket earns frequent flyer miles, but most do. To earn miles for your flight, you must fly on certain types of tickets and take steps to ensure you receive the mileage credits you’re entitled to.

When you use your frequent flyer account

Before you can earn any miles, you need to create a frequent flyer account with the airline you’re flying. Thankfully, nearly all airlines allow you to set this up for free. In fact, you can even create accounts for your minor children.

But to receive mileage credit for your flights, you must then add your frequent flyer number to your reservation; it’s not enough to simply create the account and then book a ticket without logging into that account or manually adding your number to the reservation.

The simplest way to ensure your number is on the reservations is to log into your account when you book your flight through the airline; in that case, your number will be included by default when you purchase your tickets.

Alternatively, you can decide to use a frequent flyer number with a partner carrier and credit your miles to its program. Many airlines have partnerships with numerous other airlines that allow customers to earn miles in a partner program. Most of these partnerships also allow you to redeem miles for flights operated by their partners.

For example, if you’re flying on British Airways, you can earn miles with its partner American Airlines AAdvantage program. You don’t have to create a British Airways account; you can simply use your American Airlines frequent flyer account number and earn miles in their AAdvantage program.

Once you earn American Airlines miles, you can redeem them for award flights operated by American or for flights with their numerous airline partners, including British Airways.

You purchase tickets

You can earn reward miles or points from most kinds of tickets. For example, you can earn miles if you purchase tickets yourself or if someone else purchases the ticket for you, including employers and clients (assuming they or you add your frequent flyer number to the reservation).

You will also earn reward points or miles if you purchase the ticket with a travel voucher or a gift card. And you’ll earn even more miles when you use an airline credit card to purchase your ticket.

Airline miles used to be awarded based on the distance flown, but many airlines now award miles based on the price of your ticket and your status with the airline’s frequent flyer program. However, most airlines won’t award miles for other purchases such as baggage fees, change fees and seat selection or seat upgrade fees.

When you redeem rewards points for flights

You can even earn frequent flyer miles when you redeem your credit card rewards points for travel reservations booked through the card issuer.

For example, when you redeem your Chase Ultimate Rewards points to book travel through Chase, you’re essentially using miles to pay for a regular ticket purchased through Chase’s online travel agency. The same is true when you redeem your American Express Membership Rewards points for flights booked through AmexTravel.com. And when you redeem Capital One Miles to pay for flights, you’ll also receive mileage credit. You’ll still need to remember to supply your frequent flyer number.

When will you not earn miles on a flight?

While most airline passengers will be eligible to earn frequent flyer miles for their flights, there are some situations where you may not:

You don’t enter your frequent flyer number

If you don’t put your frequent flyer number in your reservation, either because you don’t have one or because you forgot to, then you won’t earn frequent flyer miles.

Thankfully, many airlines will allow you to retroactively claim credit for a flight. To do so, you will likely have to fill out a form that includes your flight information and reservation numbers.

You don’t complete the flight

Once you’ve purchased an eligible ticket and supplied your frequent flyer account number, the next thing you need to do is actually complete the flight. Simply purchasing a ticket isn’t sufficient to earn miles.