I recently missed a flight and had to go on standby. Nothing was available on UA from DEN to IAD unless I flew first to SFO and then took a red-eye. As it was the only option available with my time-frame, I took it.

Looking at my UA Mileage Plus statement it appears that I got mileage for every leg, despite being a standby passenger!

Do all airlines mileage programs pay you miles according to the distance traveled? Or do they usually ive you the mileage of the flight booked? (Direct or not)

If each segment has a unique flight number, then you get mileage for each segment, as you did in your case. If each segment (DEN-SFO and SFO-IAD) had the same flight number, though, you would have only gotten mileage for the distance between the beginning and end cities - in other words, the mileage from DEN to IAD.

Mike

Nako is right, of course, for UA and many/most carriers. One that does not follow this pattern though is Hawaiian Airlines for interisland flights. If you book, e.g., KOA-OGG and it's 2 segments connecting in HNL you only get 500 miles, not 2 x 500 miles (500 miles is the minimum that accrues/posts on many/most airlines no matter if the actual distance is less).

With Northwest, it's what you fly -- not what you book. I've had this come up many times in the case of bumps, where I have been re-routed with an extra hub-to-hub leg.

Every time I've flown, as long as each flight has a different flight #, you get the mileage for that flight.

Flying PVD-DTW-MEM-STL gets different mile than STL-MSP-PVD, and that get more mileage than a (more direct) PVD-DTW-STL.

Likewise, PVD-ORD-LAX-LAS does not give the same mileage as PVD-DTW-SEA-LAS, PVD-ATL-DFW-LAS, LAS-IAH-EWR-PVD, or the more direct PVD-ORD-LAS.

Rebookings raise all sorts of issues that don't apply to what you earn when you book a flight with multiple segments.

In general, credit is awarded when you get on the plane and get off somewhere else. Doesn't matter whether you were booked for that flight ten weeks previous or ten minutes previous, whether you got the ticket for $$ or when you weren't on another flight (for whatever reason).

So, when the flight you're rebooked on is longer than the one you were originally booked on, you get credit for what you fly. The same thing happens in reverse: if you had been rebooked on a shorter one, you would have gotten fewer miles. In that case you can often get "original routing credit" if the rebooking was the airline's fault (e.g., mechanical). If it was for missing the flight, as it was in this case, asking for ORC could be considered greedy - though some people would, and sometimes they might actually get it.

Of course, you can always request original booking credit, for the segments that you booked versus actually flew. However, in your case, it probably worked better to take the actual flight credit. Plus, you have to call and get CS to post. I recently returned from NRT-LAX and had LAX-SAN-SJC. The nice AA ground crew agent came on the flight looking for me and said she had to put me on a LAX-SJC flight, instead.

Note that many airlines offer multisegment flights with the same flight number on each segment, but requiring a plane change and connection (which can result in missing the connection due to the first segment being delayed on a "direct" flight). In other threads, people have claimed that FF mile collection on such flights is less than if a multisegment flight with different flight numbers is flown.

With UA MP (and I'm sure some others), you do not lose credit for two successive segments with the same flight number as long as each segment is explicitly booked (look at the fare construction on your e-receipt). I would expect in a standby situation, the pax would clear each segment at a time and therefore get credit for both segments.

What you describe is my experience on Continental. As another respondent pointed out, each flight needs to have a different number. If that's the case, you should get credit for each segment.