Rudi, I have to say that I did not have this same experience with United. I went LAX-SIN by way of Tokyo on one flight number. When I checked in they did give me 2 boarding passes, one for the LAX-NRT segment and one for the NRT-SIN segment. Even though I had 2 boarding passes, the flights showed up on my MP account as one flight: LAX-SIN and I did not get the LAX-NRT route bonus. I called MP and was told the route bonus is given by whatever the city pair is in the computer and that even though I had traveled through Narita, I was not entitled to the route bonus.