In February I took a flight on Air China. At check-in, I gave the agent my Mileage Plus card, and the Mileage Plus acct. number was printed on my boarding pass.

Somehow, Air China decided to put the miles into my Air China account rather than my Mileage Plus account. They have acknowledged the mistake, but say that there is no guarantee that the miles can be switched to my Mileage Plus account now. United needs to "accept" the miles.

Does anyone know how United would make the determination about whether they can accept the miles and what recourse I might have, either through Air China, Star Alliance, or United, if they do not accept the miles?

thanks

There have been several instances (in MP forum and LH, I think) of similar mileage credited to 'wrong' accounts or programs. I haven't seen one yet where the miles end up in the program/account that the holder wants. *A has no role in this.
Air China would need to remove the miles from your account, then you need to submit a claim to MP. Good luck. Though, I wouldn't hold your breath.

Thanks for your reply.

Air China has been telling me that they need UA to reply to some email Air China sent UA regarding whether UA can accept the miles. After 30 days waiting, they got no reply from United, so I called United who told me basically the same process you've described, which is different from what Air China has been trying to do.

I'll call Air China and have them cancel the miles and then hopefully I can get United to credit them to my MP account. I'll post again with the outcome.

Finally got this sorted out.

For anyone else who runs into this, here's what the process seems to be:
1. Contact the operating airline (Air China) and send them your documentation (boarding pass etc).
2. Air China will send an email to United. They told me that the email address they use for resolving these issues is [email protected].
3. United should eventually get around to handling the email. For me, it took about 50 days.
4. Once it has been handled, the miles will be transferred to the correct account.

Step 3 is where I got really stuck. I called United several times to make sure they were being responsive to Air China's requests, but every agent I talked to gave me a different story. None of them were aware of the [email protected] email. Some of them also told me to just ask Air China to remove the miles from my Air China account and then resubmit my request for miles to United. This turned out not to be necessary once United finally got around to processing the email from Air China.

In another wrinkle, I just got an email from United referring to a complaint I filed with the DOT about this issue:
So, maybe the 6 calls I made to United, the 5 calls I made to Air China, and the 3 times Air China called and emailed United didn't solve the problem, but the complaint I filed with the DOT did.

http://airconsumer.ost.dot.gov/CP_AirlineService.htm

I ran into this about 6 years ago. It took a while, but I got it sorted.

Looks like I'm not out of the woods yet. In another twist, the miles that were finally credited to my MP account have somehow disappeared, without any notice from United. How exhausting...

This, my friends, is why you never want to have a second FF# anywhere near your PNR if you care about the EQM/RDM going to the right place.

I know lots of you try the FQTV/FQTS thing to get your current Airline B status benefits while getting credit to Airline A for RDM and EQM towards next year's status. But it's a recipe for heartbreak and agita.

Most gate agents, even if they are aware of FQTV vs FQTS existence do not like to be bothered, and practically none understand the implications in the FF programs involved. Why? Because a) they're gate agents and probably don't know about the customer-facing benefits of the FF program - they fly free(ish), and b) at least one of those FF#s is not their own airline's so they know and care even less.

Plus I've never seen a self-service option (OLCI, website booking, kiosk) that had any transparency into nor understanding or visibility to the separate FF fields. So likely, the moment your res is touched by a customer-facing automation system, one number is getting overlaid onto the other.

Add to that the master-vs.-sub-PNR issues when more than one airline is in the itinerary (+1 if an agency or online travel site was the booking source), and you simply have zero way to truly know what FF# is going to prevail.

Unless you make sure that you never let any other FF# get near your reservation. Which probably means don't have a login on the website of that other airline, even if buying from them, even if they have a FF program selection dropdown box.

Yes, some cases work OK. Old CO used to handle it all right with ability to change during OLCI. Old UA less so, especially beyond the first segment, but using an airside kiosk at your connecting point would work ok. During the year that I was CO Plat but un-merged UA had dropped to now-Silver, then Premier (2P), but 2P got E+ seating while CO P did not, I did this all the time when flying UA.

But I'd never expect multiple carriers to get this right, because it's really "Inside baseball".