Originally Posted by
ATOBTTR
Yes you should still get the miles (based on distance flown) towards your Million Miler total. I flew a straight-up award ticket recently and my Million Miler balance went up by the distance of the flight after the activity posted to my Skymiles account.
ETA: If you're considering using a significant number of miles via Pay With Miles, consider looking at straight up mileage award tickets to see if you get a better value per mile out of the redemption as you'll still get the miles towards your MMer balance (and get the MQDs for the ticket). Pay With Miles yields only 1 cent per mile while I've been able to get 1.7 to 1.8 cent per mile redemptions with award tickets.
Thanks for the answer.
And yes, I appreciate what you said about how to use the miles. Unfortunately for me, we are a party of 3 and I didn't have enough miles to pay for all 3 of us with an Award ticket, but I was able to lower the cost significantly by buying the tickets and then using miles to reduce the cost. I would prefer to get an Award ticket, but just couldn't in this instance.