I was just at the MR101 seminar in SEA on Saturday and I met some great FT folk who convinced me that I should start an AS MP account and put all my miles into this account since I tend to fly the cheaper fares on whatever airline, usually NW and AA. This way I might be able to gain elite status and not have all my miles spread around.

After looking into the program and searching through several threads in this forum, I have a question about earning miles on AS during an upcoming trip.

More than a month ago, I booked a ticket to Budapest on NW for this January and I want to understand what qualifies for AS miles and what doesn't. From what I understood from other threads, it is the metal of the plane or who operates the flight that counts, not necessarily which airline it was ticketed on. Please correct me if I am wrong!

Here is the way my flight is ticketed:
SEA-AMS KL6034 operated as NW34
AMS-BUD KL3201 operated by Malev
BUD-AMS NW3936 operated as MA660
AMS-SEA NW33

Since KLM is not a AS partner any longer, I was wondering if my first flight from SEA-AMS still counts for AS miles since it is actually operated by NW.

For my two Malev operated flights, I assume that these will not count for AS miles and I should credit the segments to my NW account (even though one of the segments is ticketed as a NW flight this would not be eligeable for AS miles).

And obviously, the final flight is ticketed and operated by NW so it would earn AS miles.

I would appreciate any comments or corrections on my understanding. Thanks so much!