Originally Posted by
bobbybrown
English website doesn't list all the details. According to Korean language site, it strongly implies
"Only KE or KE-coded flights are eligible for elite qualifying miles."
Seriously hope this is not the final one. Otherwise, what's the point of being in SkyTeam?
This is a slight improvement over the current system where only miles from KE metal flights with a KE flight number qualify for Morning Calm status.
Looking at the changes overall, it seems lot worse for non-Korea based flyers than for flyers in Korea. Since awards are now priced by length of each segment, any trip that requires a connection in Korea requires significantly more miles than it did before. On the other hand, if you're going to/from Korea, there are several city pairs that will be less expensive now than they were before (Nearby cities in China/Japan, Vietnam, Philippines, Hawaii, Dubai, Russia, Brisbane, etc.)
Same for elite qualification, if you're based on Korea you can realistically do all of your flying on KE and KE codeshares. If you're based elsewhere in the world, you probably won't be able to get status miles for all of your flights unless you only fly to Korea/Asia.