Etihad Guest No Longer Earns 100 Percent Mileage from AA Flights
Anya Kartashova November 03, 2017
More and more frequent-flyer programs programs are making it harder and harder to earn miles the old-fashioned way—by flying.
The Big Three U.S. airlines—Delta Airlines, United Airlines and United Airlines—have all gone revenue based. In other words, frequent flyers no longer earn miles based on distance of a flight and earn based on the cost of a ticket instead. Since the change, many travelers started creatively crediting their miles to other partnering programs of their choice. For example, United flyers would credit mileage flown to Singapore KrisFlyer. Delta passengers would credit to Alaska Mileage Plan, and AA flyers would credit to Etihad Guest.
As you might have heard, Alaska and Delta have ended their frenetic partnership. And Singapore KrisFlyer program recently changed its mileage earning rates on United flights. The cheapest United tickets now earn only 25 percent of the distance flown, which hurts those travelers who buy bargain fares.
Yet, another loophole has been closed. Etihad no longer earns full mileage credits from low-fare flights operated by American Airlines, as reported by View from the Wing. The number of miles now depends on the class of booking.
Etihad Guest is a transfer program of American Express Membership Rewards and Citi ThankYou Points, which is why crediting your AA flights to the Abu Dhabi-based carrier made the most sense. It was easier to pool points into one program for a redemption. Unfortunately, crediting your cheap AA fares is no longer as lucrative as it was before.
Will this new development affect the way you credit miles?
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AA is ending codeshare with Etihad, so doesn't seem like that much of a loss to me.