500 mile minimum and cheap fare classes on BA?
 

I'm unclear how the 500 mile minimum and class of service percentages work together when flying BA and earning AS miles.

The BA chart on the AS website says that flights in Q class earn 25%. Further down the page in the details it says "mileage earned is based on a percentage of actual flight miles flown, with a 500 minimum miles on flights shorter than 500 miles."

If it take a 470 mile flight in Q class, do I earn 500 miles or 125 miles (25% of 500)?

Thanks!

You would earn 500. Any flight in an eligible class will earn whichever is greater, 500 miles or the given percentage of miles (plus any bonus).

Unfortunately its a bit more complicated than just saying you will earn 500. For status miles, you will earn 25% of the distance. For redeemable miles, you will earn 500.

The 500 mile minimum applies to EQM as well as RDM. The percentage rate is applied to the actual miles first, before the 500 mile minimum is applied and will be trued up if it's below.

For a 476 mile flight earning 25%, 119 miles will post as base miles (EQM and RDM). AS will post an additional 381 miles as bonus miles for the 500 mile minimum. These will count as both EQM and RDM. Any elite status bonus will be based on the 500 mile minimum and will also be posted as bonus miles (RDM only).

All of my sub 500 mile trips have haven't given me 500 status miles. I just tallied up my miles total for the year.

That's strange and goes against experience reported here. I checked mine and I'm definately seeing 500 EQM minimums across AS and three partners (AA,DL,JL) in my account. Is there a specific partner you're flying sub 500 mile segments or connecting flights with the same flight number?

The 500-mile minimum doesn't apply towards Million Miler qualification, but otherwise all short AS and partner flights have credited as 500 EQMs for me.

You will get the 500. I just took BA SEA-LHR-MUC. On the LHR-MUC segment, I earned 295 miles but got bumped up to 500 for EQM based on my math.

As an aside, I did a paid AUP to WT+ and I didn't have any problems getting 100% mileage credit for that instead of the 25% I would have gotten at the original fare.

What does AUP mean?

Are you sure about that? My total credited AS flying this year so far has been 2 EUG-PDX flights (106 base miles each) and my MM total is exactly 1000 miles higher.

AUP = Avia Business Group?

All my sub 500 miles flights on Alaska and partner airlines have been credited as 500 EQMs.

Can confirm that 500 minimum will credit towards MM. I am at 160 segments and 80,000 miles towards MM. My flights actual miles are 129 and 344.
As I understand partner flights do not credit towards MM.

Airport UPgrade: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/brit...ng-thread.html

The upgrade from WT to WT+ from SEA was $355 last week.

That makes way more sense than my first guess, which was Avios UPgrade. Knew that was wrong, because the 25% fare classes aren't upgradable that way. Thanks for the answer.

Thanks everyone. That's good news that it will be 500 EQMs. My MVPG requal this year is going to be tiiiiiight, so every mile counts.

Hello all
Does anyone know If the above also applies to AF? I need a short internal flight within France to get to MVP. The distance is around 300 miles and only qualifies for 25% mileage. I need the 500 mile minimum to be elite counting. Thanks!

As long as the fare class purchased is an eligible class for crediting to Mileage Plan and the flight faĺls within the Specified Flight numbers listed on their partner page the following applies.

Mileage earned is based on a percentage of actual flight miles flown, with 500 minimum miles on flights shorter than 500 miles. Miles may not be earned for tickets flown in O or X class of service. No miles will be earned for classes of service not listed above..

James

Thanks James - much appreciated. It is their terminology that is a little confusing as it is not overly clear if one receives a minimum of 500 miles regardless of the booking class or the flight distance is a minimum of 500 miles and the earning percentage is based on this - e.g. 50% earning fare classes earn 250 miles.

It will be 500 miles if it meets the criteria for crediting to Mileage Plan.

I should also note that once you reach MVP you will also get 50% bonus RDM as an Elite so your next eligible flight to credit to Mileage plan will be distance flown adjusted by fare class EQM + 50% RDM bonus (minimum 500 EQM + 250 Bonus RDM = 750 RDM)

In your example with an eligible flight of 1200 miles at 50% fare class credit will be 1200 × 0.50 = 600 EQM + 300 bonus RDM = 900 RDM . If the same eligible flight is 200 miles your credit will be 500 EQM (minimum) + 250 bonus RDM = 750 RDM. Similarly MVPG would be 1000 RDM (100% bonus RDM) and MVPG75K would 1125 RDM (125% bonus RDM).

James

super cheap LON-AMS posted as 500 miles for me recently.