DoggyDaddy

I am taking a trip in a few weeks with AA as my outbound flight and CO back home. When I get my rental car, which FF account would get the miles (assuming both are participating)?

Could I get credit on both?

DD

Tute84

The credit goes to the airline that you told the rental company to credit it to. Sometimes you can get them to credit it even without a flight.

rmccamy

I can confirm that: You do NOT need to fly on any particular airline to earn FF miles from your car rental. I know this is true at Hertz, Avis, and National - and I'll go ahead and assume it's true for the others as well. The rental car companies have no idea what airline you were on anyway.

Don't limit yourself to AA or CO unless those are your only two FF programs. Look at your rental car company's website for 2x/3x offers and take one of those. Or...look at your favorite airline's website and cross-reference where they have 2x/3x promos going on at car companies. You'll come up with something a bit juicier than the norm, I'm sure.

Note: Back in the old days (pre-#1 Club Gold/Emerald Isle/etc.) they would occasionally ask for a boarding pass before awarding you miles for your rental. That was also before they had websites for you to automatically enter the number at the time of booking. The flight requirement was most likely dropped because it was a pain in the butt to deal with, along with the fact that they could really care less how you got there...