Earning Qualified Segments on SkyTeam partner flights?
 

Hi

I mostly fly *A and at least with SAS Eurobonus you only get qualifying segments when you actually fly SAS. If you fly *A partners you only get miles.

For various reasons I plan on going back and forth from JFK-BOS and JFK-DCA a few times this year, thus earning me a good bunch of cheap shorthaul segments. According to this page on KLM.com I can earn Silver status on just 15 qualifying segments and Gold on 30 segments. And as I read the fine print it seems to include partner flights.
So instead of joining Delta SkyMiles it might be better for me to just stick to Flying Blue with KLM. That way I will easily get SkyTeam elite and have priority boarding, checkin etc. on all SkyTeam flights.

The question is: did I get it all wrong? Was there something I missed?

You are right. In principle, all segments on Skyteam flights count for status in all Skyteam FFPs. Im an writing "in principle" because it can happen with low booking classes that you do not get miles for a flight, in which case the segment does not count either.
But AFAIK this problem does not occur when you fly on DL, KL and AF and credit the flight to Flying Blue.

This forum is so amazing. Thank you so much! I will try it out a few flights and see if they count.

For example domestic flights within Italy (Alitalia / AirOne) often do not earn anything.

to follow on from this.. do flights with Cathay count as segments in the flying blue program?

I plan a trip Toulouse - Paris - Hong Kong - Melbourne return. All flights are with Cathay apart from the domestic France connection with AF. I am a non resident in France so the internal flights in France will count too, so I expect this will earn 6 segments in total? is this correct?

Thanks

No, flights with Cathay do not count because Cathay is neither a Flying Blue partner nor a Skyteam member. (Cathay is a member of the OneWorld alliance.) Under these circumstances, a flight with Cathay would count only if it could be booked with an AF or KL code, but I am not aware that such ta cooperation exists between Cathay and AF/KL. (Actually, AF cooperates with Qantas on the HKG-MEL route.)