I bought a ticket by DL for the flight Sao Paolo-Franfurt which gave 3000 miles. Althought the originally schedule flight was by Lufthansa, the DL canceled this flight (due to the german strikes on February) and let me travel finally by LATAM (no member by Star Alliance). As a card member of A3, Aegean Airlines denied to give me the miles because the "real airline" didnot accept it. My question is how does is work? Which airline (DL or LATAM) is the "real airline" and which gives the miles to A3? does someone pay to the A3 in order to earn miles and therefore I could have privilegs to the next flight? I am confused... is there a website explaining how does it work between the member of the same group, especially in cases for cancelations or using a non member airlines without my fault. Thanks a lot.

In the *A system, the operating carrier determines earnings, not the ticketing carrier or the marketing carrier. LATAM as a non-*A carrier will not earn any award or elites miles for a *A program. When there is a change like this you can ask the crediting program carrier (A3) for ORC, Original Routing Credit. Some carriers will do this, some will not. In this case with DL as the ticketing carrier, your chances for ORC further decrease. This is the irrops downside of using a non-alliance ticketing carrier for a MR.

thank you WineCountryUA for the reply. I often travel to the south America using DL which cooperate with LATAM. In order to avoid the same risk, to the next time I will prefer TK which hasnot code-share with LATAM. That means that the really loser is DL, does't?