A friend of mine who is KLM Silver but not a seasoned ticket picker has booked tickets on the CO website LHR to EWR return next year hoping to get KLM miles. She thought she was travelling CO but when I looked at her ticket I noted that although both have CO numbers they are in fact on Virgin metal. Will she get miles? Any experience?

Since VS is not a KL partner, she will not be able to get KL miles on VS operated flights.

Continental flies only to LGW. All EWR - LHR flights are operated by VS.

But it should get her miles as a Skyteam-coded flight, no?

As a general rule of thumbs you get miles for a codeshare flight that is operated by a partner airline of your FF programs airline.

So you would get miles on CO Onepass I guess, but you won't on KL FD or NW WP...

deleted because of content similarity with previous poster

It just needs to be made clearer. If you think you are booking a CO flight on the CO site and it even takes your KLM FD number there should be a warning to say you cannot get miles on FD or whatever.

True, but playing the devils advocate, the CO website indicates that the specific flight is operated by another carrier. It is kind of a fineprint, but it is advertised as such...

....but not very customer friendly. In fairness most airline websites are pretty bad at pointing out things like fare class, T&C, mileage conditions etc.

If only more of them followed the example of Singapore Airlines - their booking process is excellent and makes a point of indicating which fares qualify for mileage.

-- Dambus

Continental.com does the same thing (show earned miles and Elite qualifying miles), but only for Continental NonePass, not for partners.

In general Continental.com is intended for NonePass passengers. You can put a partner FF number in the reservation but the reservation system will not adjust itself to you. By the way, you put your FF number only at the last step before paying, long after you chose the flights.
Heck, to book on NWA.com you must log in with a WP number, even if you intend to use other FF number on the reservation. If you don't have a NW WP number (like if you are a KLM FD member), you need to enroll and get a number you will never use.

Also, to show the focus of the website - Continental.com sells only Continental coded flights. While it has full partnerships with NW, KL, DL, AS and more, you will never get their flights on Continental.com unless they are on published codeshares with CO code.

First, let KLM, CO and NW officialy join SkyTeam ...

Then, you will get miles for SkyTeam operated flights, not coded ones. VS is not a part of SkyTeam so it does not qualify in this category.

Hmm, now, I seem to remember from the dim and distant past that CO and VS had a special arrangement for their partnership on LON-NYC, in that the arrangement was a hardblock rather than a codeshare, so a CO ticket on VS on that route counted as CO metal.

Has this arrangement changed?

The CO-VS arrangement has indeed changed and no longer is a hardblock.

You could certainly get FD miles on CO-coded VS flights at the time of the hardblock.

I have not seen any announcement of any change in FD rules, so I assume that you can still get FD miles for CO flights. I hope so, as I just booked a flight which includes a CO-coded IAD-LHR on VS in UC and I would hate to see those miles go to waste... Presumably, as a CO-coded flight, I could not have them credited to BD, even though it is a VS metal flight?

why doesn't anyone try calling the FD helpdesk in order for the matter to be resolved?

Best joke I've heard today !