Originally Posted by
tommyleo
Even if you did not change aircraft, note the "Achieving Preferred Status" T&C on
this page:
The number of Preferred-qualifying miles you'll earn are based on actual miles, or on actual segments flown on qualifying paid tickets, whichever is greater. That's right:
actual miles.
I hate to burst your bubble, but I strongly suspect that they mean the actual miles from A to B, not actual flight path miles. There are non-stop routes where the actual flight path miles are significantly higher than the miles from A to B because of preferred ATC routing. ALB-PHL is a case in point, because the actual flight path is a semi-circle around the NYC airspace so is probably 40% further than the straight-line distance.
I also suspect that the same logic applies to direct flights. You're booked from A to B on flight 1234 so the miles would be the actual distance between A and B even though the flight may go A-C-B.
In fairness, the actual flight miles could vary for 3 successive flights from A to B, given ATC spacing, departure/arrival runway, departing/arriving traffic flow, etc. It would be nearly impossible to calculate the actual miles flown for every segment every day, so a standard mileage is set for each flight.
Jim