I won't mention the airline for fear they watch these boards and would take action (not too paranoid, eh?) butmy wife and I flew to Europe in business class on an award ticket in 1997.

Our outbound flights were on the US carrier that issued the award. Our return to the US was on a European partner carrier that issued its own boarding passes. When checking in, I placed our frequent flyer membership cards on the counter because we were status members.

Both of us were quite pleased a month or so later when our statements arrived... dang, now you know it was not UA since their mileage statements never arrive that promptly!!! Anyway, we received mileage for the flight plus the business class bonus plus the elite membership bonus! It ended up being over 14,000 miles for each of us! Our cost: $0.00