A Cautionary Tale (how I royally screwed up my *G qualifying strategy on A3)
 

This year, I was planning to switch to A3 from SQ in order to obtain and maintain *G status. One factor behind this was the reduction in miles awarded on SQ to former sweet spots such as ‘W’ class flex bookings.

I had already notched up some SK flights in Y+ and an LH D flight to the A3 program in Q1 to get me within 2K of Silver (12K). Of course, I had also planned in the necessary 2 segments on A3 (WAW-ATH-WAW) for late March.

I then had an SK (Plus) flight ARN-HKG-ARN booked for April which, by earning just over 20K miles, would blow me way past the Silver qualifying mark and put me well on track to Gold (18K carried over and only 6K more needed with the requisite 4 segments).

However, a couple of days after I made the outbound (WAW-ATH) leg of my A3 flight, I realised to my horror that it had credited to SQ rather than A3. This seems to be because I checked in on the app and somehow it set the FFP to SQ (even though the original booking had A3 FFP). I was able to confirm this by going through the mobile check-in process for the inbound leg on the app also - even though I selected A3 as the FFP, when I examined the mobile boarding pass it had SQ as the FFP. There was no way I could get A3 to stick as the FFP if I checked in with the app - it would give me my Kris Flyer number every time even when I selected A3 during check-in (or afterwards with Modify Check-in).

My big mistake was not to carefully examine the boarding pass I got printed out just before the WAW-ATH leg outbound leg - if I’d done that I’d have seen that I had SQ as the FFP.

So this means that when I make the HKG flight scheduled for April I will end up qualifying to *S but because I won’t already have made the 2 A3 segments an extra 12K miles will be consumed in the process of reaching Silver. I’ll have earned 30K status miles by the time I return but 24K of those will now be counted for *S qualification rather than the 12K I had originally expected. The status clock resets upon clearing *S but I will now have only 6K carried over for *G qualification instead of 18K.

As it’s only about 3 weeks before the HKG trip I guess I’m out of luck. I don’t really have time to patch in another ATH trip from WAW between Easter and going to HKG.

If there’s any conceivable way I can recover this situation, I’d be interested to know but I guess this is one of those times when I just have to take my lumps.

BTW, my return leg on A3 to WAW is later today. The way things stand I might as well credit it to SQ as I’ll get 995 miles instead of 746 (P class) and having just one segment is pointless.

What’s even more evil about this is that when I went back and checked the original mobile boarding pass in my iPhone Wallet for the WAW-ATH leg it showed A3 but the number following it was my Kris Flyer number! So it would be easy to think that I’ve got the right FFP selected just by glancing at the boarding pass on my iPhone. I had no idea it was possible for things to get mangled up in this way.

How good is your relationship with SQ? Your only hope here, given it appears the issue is yours in not noticing the wrong FFP was entered, is to persuade them to remove the flight credit from your KrisFlyer account and put it back into the Starnet pot for a retroclaim.

If you have some evidence that at least one part of MMB showed your A3 account you'll have a better chance, but I would - in honesty - put your chances at low.

Well I’m *G if that helps.

I still have the mobile wallet pass for the outbound to ATH that shows A3 in the FFP field (my printed pass has SQ).

However hard I try I can’t get it to save correctly as A3 with my actual M&B number when using mobile checkin (the number itself is always the Kris Flyer number). I’m flying in 3 hours so I’ll have to try contacting SQ when I get to ATH airport.

This may be something worth trying. For now you could also try to have your M&B FFP number registered at the check in counter in ATH. In any case, nothing to lose apart from the difference between SQ and A3 mileage. Unless you will be needing these 995-746=249 miles for status/award purposes any time soon, the stake is small and perhaps it's worth giving it a shot.

i was in almost same situation... booked SK from OTP to NRT for Silver, then an SQ from LHR all the way to AKL and back and then I realized that I actually need to fly 2 A3 legs between those flights... luckily I am based at OTP so an A3 return to ATH is only 80E... good luck!

I may be mistaken (it is 1am after all) but I think this is one of the situations where delaying the claim of you HKG flight might actually be of benefit. The "status clock" does NOT reset when you reach Silver (the Silver -> Gold qualification works on a rolling-year rather than on a fixed year as it does for Gold renewal) so, in theory any miles left over after the Silver requirement should carry over towards Gold qualification. So... If you just don't claim the HKG flight until AFTER you reach silver by the preferred method (12,0000 + 2 segments), and then retro claim HKG, it will still be backdated to the date of the flight of course, but then those miles SHOULD carry over. At least in theory although I don't know of anyone who has done that and posted here.

What do others think? Am I mistaken or does this make sense?

I like that idea.. making it a retro claim after I can patch in another trip to ATH.

Do others agree that this will work (i.e. Silver will be activated as soon as the retro claim is credited and the excess miles will carry over)?

Just an update - after speaking to SQ it appeared my chances were minimal of getting it reversed (the phrase 'very pessimistic' was used several times). I was already in ATH at that time, ready for the trip to WAW, so I decided to cut my losses and credit the return leg to SQ. This meant I could at least enjoy the new A3 lounge and board first. I also got 100% rather than 75% for the P class fare. The mobile boarding pass had shown me as A3*G (!) but with my SQ FF number when I had first checked in and I got allocated seat 3D - the first row behind what turned out to be an empty business class. The outbound (which had similarly mangled FFP data but showed a plain blue pass starting with A3) had offered me 30C (right at the back), so maybe I got extra benefit from that also (interesting, given that A3 is now charging Golds to sit near the front).

It struck me as I waited in the A3 lounge that since getting SQ*G I had almost immediately begun crediting to A3 and so had received little tangible benefit from holding the Kris Flyer Gold card. Again, if SQ hadn't cut the mileage earnings for my favoured booking classes shortly after I got made up to *G, there's a good chance I would have tried to retain KF Gold for 2019. Knowing my luck, A3 will radically overhaul the M&B program once I've become *G with them!

I am so confused about all the upgrade and miles. But I hope my best wishes to you all trying to achieve Gold/Silver.

One question is why not considering the lifetime Gold with Asiana if you are flying so much?

Funnily enough, OTP is actually a destination I plan to visit later this year. I could even do that instead of ATH although the 4-segment trip from WAW is overkill for *S and ordinarily I'd do this trip direct via LO.

Despite my issues with not having the segments counted, a trip to Athens/Greece is not something I'd ever consider as wasted and having a good excuse to go back soon is no bad thing.

One thing's for sure though - I'll stick to check-ins on my PC from now on!

I had indeed considered OZ as an alternative to SQ but I cannot stand their crummy website and when I pored over their mileage tables the potential earnings where not as generous I could find elsewhere, given the kind of routes that I preferred. I also had an issue with them not crediting a flight I did to Jeju from ICN and the hassle involved in this relatively small matter made me reluctant to commit to them as my default scheme.

So far my experiences with A3 on the CS side have been very positive. A3's recent announcements certainly don't look great but compared to the horror show that is LH's Miles and More it still looks the best option.

My sympathies. That's really annoying.

I've found if you're planning a 'tight' qualification plan it's best to organize to complete it as early as possible in what will be your qualification (or re-qualification) year. That way if it goes pear-shaped you have a chance to retrieve the situation. That's what happened to me last year. I had some long hauls on BR that went from classes crediting 100% miles under A3 to 50% or 0% crediting, between booking and flying. Or it may even have changed before I booked, but I was working off the old BR crediting rules when I chose the booking classes (lesson: check the A3 partner crediting page again before you book !). Upgrading the flights' classes was impractically expensive. But luckily I had enough time to take an extra holiday to Thailand on TG that got me the miles before the date. ;)

@yurtripper, I gave up on M&M, is pretty difficult to get higher than FTL if dont fly paid biz a lot. I will stick to A3, being based at OTP is a major benefit :)

Kind of confused. Why did you need to credit to SQ for these things?