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My parents will be traveling BOM-FRA-IAH return in LH Biz (all 4 segments) on a UA code share ticket. Booking was made on ua website (016 ticket#). Booking class is P for both UA and LH (confirmed by calling both).

Based on what I have read, it is the LH booking class that will apply for earning miles on a *A partner, except for UA which will earn the standard 5mi/$. Is this correct, or would the UA booking class apply for *A too. Looks like UA P class earnings on *A partners are in general better than LH P.

thanks in advance...

Kacee

Not really following your question, but for a P fare on an LH operated flight, with an 016 ticket, credited to UA mileage plus, the LH partner earnings as stated on UA's website will apply. Specifically, for a no status passenger, award miles will be 5x the fare, and premier qualifying miles will be 150% of miles flown.

WineCountryUA

Partner flights on UA (016) tickets, for award miles (RDMs), will earn 5 (for non-elite members) x PQD (Premier Qualifying Dollars) for each segment --- this should show on their ticket receipt (although there are occasionally problems with that data)

PQM (Premier Qualifying Miles) for status earning -- will be based on the partner fare class multiple (probably P in this case) times the miles traveled for the segment. That should be 150% of miles traveled.

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Thanks for the replies. So I understand how many miles would be earned if credited to UA. My question was about crediting miles to a different *A partner, say Aeroplan. As per wheretocredit.com, a UA P ticket earns 150% aeroplan miles of the miles flown, whereas, LH P ticket earns only 50%.
I am trying to find out which airline to credit the flights to, so as to get the most value. So the main thing I wanted to confirm is, that when crediting to a *A partner, other than UA or LH, which fare class will be used to determine the number of miles earned. Apologies it wasn't clear from my original post.

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WineCountryUA

In *A, the operating carrier's fare class is used. Even if coded as a codeshare, it is still the operating carrier.
Fortunately for LH and UA, the codeshare fare class and the operating carrier fare class are generally the same.

As for maximizing the mileage earned, have a few miles here and a few miles there is not a great approach. For the infrequent traveler, it is best to focus on just one program so you can get a critical mass of miles in one location. Versus smaller, unusable collection of miles in various programs.

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Thanks for confirming it. Even though both UA and LH have the same booking class, unfortunately LH P class seems to earn less miles across the board than UA P class. In fact, some partners don't earn any miles for LH P class tickets.

Also, I fully understand that few miles here and there don't help much. However for India <-> US travel in biz one can earn close to 25K miles. In fact for their past couple of visits that was the case and I was able to use them for tickets to Canada. Looks like this time it won't be possible as the max earn rate is 100% for LH P class on any airline. I was initially hoping to put the miles in A3, as they usually give 200% for travel on quite a few *A partners, but for LH P they give no miles!!. The best option seems to be Aeroplan with 100% earning on this ticket and then I can transfer Amex MR points to get to 25K for a North America ticket in biz.

Thanks again for the inputs. Would like to hear from more folks if they have a better suggestion.

Kacee

BOM-FRA-IAH would be 18,638 miles RT. Are AC earning on this itinerary really that much better than UA? If the PQD on the ticket total 3727 or more, the UA accruals will be equal or greater to AC.

The issue with Aeroplan awards is the fuel surcharges on many carriers, including LH.

WineCountryUA

If P fare purchased on UA site, the earning could easily exceed 100% AC earnings. On a UA ticket stock, the earnings for a non-elite will be 5x the PQD (in this case probably >90% of purchase price). UA does not use flown mileage but rather PQDs to determine award miles.

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Fortunately (or unfortunately :-)), it was an amazing fare (<$2400 pp incl taxes). The break down shown in the ticket is ~$1400 + taxes/surcharges. Not sure how UA calculates the portion of fare for mileage purpose but was told by the UA agent that this ticket would earn 9K+ miles total. So it is only about 50% of the miles flown. Also luckily Aeroplan doesn't charge fuel surcharge on UA so hopefully we'll be able to find a good use for them. The only other decent option which gives 100% miles is Krisflyer. Will look into it more, may be that is a better option than Aeroplan as it should be even easier to top it off and it has 20K miles one way biz awards within North America (not sure if that applies only to non-stops or includes connecting flights too).

You'd be surprised (I was too) that usually one can find pretty cheap biz tickets India to US (US to India is more expensive). Even though this is the cheapest till now, earlier we have been able to get it for around $2600-2700 (always on Air China). In fact a friend of mine once got it for like $2100, also on Air China BOM-PEK-EWR (or may be JFK, don't remember).