yminev

Happy New Year everyone - may 2009 bring lot's of miles and upgrades to all of you. I was wondering what your opinion is on the following milage earning situation:

My main Sky Team FF program is Delta SkyMiles, but have some old miles in my OK Plus account as well.

Ticket Originally Bought (all Alitalia metal):
AZ609 JFK FCO
AZ518 FCO SOF
AZ519 SOF FCO
AZ610 FCO JFK

After a few changes and cancelations, Alitalia confirmed the following:
AZ609 JFK FCO
AZ520 FCO SOF
AZ7177 SOF FCO, operated by Bulgaria Air
AZ610 FCO JFK

Miles from the Inbount trip already posted to my DL SkyMiles account as follows:
Description Miles BonusMiles TotalMiles MQMEarned
AZ520 from FCO to SOF (L) 1200 0 1200 1200
AZ609 from JFK to FCO (L) 4277 0 4277 4277

My original ticket was booked in class L, however, both inbound boarding passes showed class Y (not sure if AZ always shows Y to signify economy class of service).

Delta AZ Mileage Earning: https://www.delta.com/skymiles/about...x.jsp#alitalia

Alitalia FF's Mileage Earning: http://www.alitalia.com/US_EN/millem..._2008_2010.htm

While the mileage between JFK and FCO is the actual, the miles between FCO and SOF clearly come from AZ's Mileage Earning computation (relevant table is for 2008), even though one would think that SkyMiles would be only deposited based on the SkyMiles mileage earning rules. This is certainly nothing to complain from since I receiving 1200 MQM/SM from FCO-SOF even though Delta rules would only give me the actual BIS of about 560.

Now my question is what should I do with my SOF-FCO outbound flight coming up in a few days. After AZ's schedule changes, it is now not operated by a Sky Team airline, which means that Delta MQM and Skymiles cannot be earned. However, based on the inbound trip, it looks like miles were deposited based on AZ's Mileage earning rules, and not Delta's. Should I put my DL SM number in and hope that I get 1000 MQM (based on the new AZ mileage earning), or just use my OK Plus account number for this flight and be sure that I earn miles since OK Plus allows mileage earning on all Sky Team coded flights. Alternatively, if I decide to leave my DL SkyMiles number in, would I be able to clain OK Plus miles later, if DL doesn't approve them?

Thanks for your help very much.

graraps

You won't get DL miles.

I'd say you won't get OK+ miles, either, at least not unless and until you do a retro-claim (I had the same issue with a UX ticket that included a codeshare op by A7; the miles for the Air Europa flight posted automatically but it's now been 6 weeks since I posted the BP for the subsequent A7 segment and I still haven't got the retroclaimed miles).
Since the OK+ retroclaim form asks you to declare that you haven't requested any other miles for said segment, I'd stay on the safe side and swap my DL number for the OK one at check-in.

yminev

To follow up, I gave my OK Plus number at check-in and saw 1000 miles credited to my OK Plus account from flight AZ 7177 a week later.

One thing to note is that the boarding card I received had the operating carrier's flight number on it, and not the actual ticketed flight number AZ 7177. At check in, the operating airline's agents couldn't see the AZ flight number and could only check-in passangers with paper tickets from AZ. Had I done a retro claim, I might have had issues with my boarding pass not showing AZ 7177 on it.

goodandclassy

Good info!
I am doing the same flight (AZ7177 / FB449) on Friday. I iwll put my DL number and let you know what happens. I am OK with no mileage credit - but maybe Delta will sucker into letting me have some miles

yminev

So how did it go?

goodandclassy

Quite well, apparently!
I was about to put in for a mileage request...

next thing you know
"Alitalia Flight 7177 from SOF to Rome-Leonardo, Italy (M) 1200 0 1200 1800
Bonus: PLATINUM BONUS 0 1200 1200"
So, not only did i get a nice number of miles but also a MQM boost
Thank you Delta!