I did a little searching but didn't find much of a discussion of this subject relative to miles accumulation and mileage running. I just took a new job that requires I book travel with Carlson Wagonlit's "cliqbook" product and just yesterday I booked my first trip. I'm fully vested in WorldPerks/SkyTeam and I was frustrated to find that on a simple MSP-ORD route I couldn't find a better (compliant) rate on a SkyTeam parter. I had to book on UA. Ugh!

For the first time in over 4 years I'm going to be exiting MSP in something other than a red tail. It sounds melodramatic, but it kind of makes me sick to my stomach. Now it's only 1000 lousy miles so it's not the end of the world. But It just annoys me that I couldn't get the mandatory system to fit into my overall miles accumulation/running scheme.

Are there tweaks and work-arounds to these sort of things. Or do others in the same situation just suck it up and follow the policy.