How to figure out mile earnings from flights

Howdy from Barcelona! I just finished a whirlwind 5-flight journey that took me from Boston to Atlanta, London, Oslo, Paris, and now Spain…

And in just a few hours, I’ll head to Madrid, then onward to Bucharest.

Every single flight has been delayed, but I’ve managed to scrape by (and get in a few gate-run workouts 💪).

Why am I doing this to myself? Well, I’ll tell you a bit more in a sec:

• 🌎 Million Mile Challenge Update

• ✈️ 15% transfer bonus to LifeMiles

• 💳 Current Transfer Bonuses

🌎 Million Mile Challenge Update

Alright. So, the reason I’ve flown six times in the last two days is that I’m trying my darnedest to complete the SAS Million Mile Challenge.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check out this newsletter.

Anyway, I’m on a quest to fly on 15 different SkyTeam Airlines before the end of the year.

And I take solace in knowing that two of my lovely coworkers (Ali and McKay) are also on the same quest.

We’ve all been hard at work and have been crisscrossing each other around the world, and here is an update of where we each stand:

Since we all started planning this, we’ve faced two primary challenges:

1. The schedule. Since retroactive flights needed to be credited by December 20th (and therefore flown by December 8th), we were really trying to cram flights in…

2. Booking the correct fare classes

For anyone else taking on this challenge (I know for a fact at least a handful of you are), you’ll be happy to see that yesterday, SAS CHANGED the terms and conditions in our favor:

Now, any flights completed by December 31st will count, even if you retroactively credit the flights after that point.

This effectively gives us an extra couple of weeks to complete the challenge, which is great.

On the second point, well, let’s talk about that.

You see, one of the terms of this challenge is that each flight must earn SAS miles.

Oftentimes, basic economy flights don’t earn miles. But when you’re flying with a partner loyalty number…

That comes down to the Fare Basis Code.

Knowing your fare codes will tell you a lot about your flight, benefits, and how many miles you’ll earn - and this concept applies to ANY program, so pay attention! ☝️

When you look at the SAS website, it will show you airline by airline, which fare codes will earn miles, and how many.

For example, let’s say we want to fly on TAROM, the Romanian airline that I’ll be flying tomorrow.

If we look at the SAS page for TAROM, we see that the lowest fare classes don’t earn ANY SAS miles. 😬

Therefore, if I booked a flight with one of these codes (O, X, or W), I wouldn’t earn SAS miles, and my flight would not count toward this challenge.

But when I go to TAROM’s website to book a flight, the booking classes are labeled “Light,” “Saver,” and “Optim.”

So, which letter code applies to them?

If we click “more info” on that page, we’ll see a chart that lays out the TAROM fare labels and corresponding letter codes.

As we can see, the letter codes for “Light” fares are E, S, V, T, and F.

If we go back to the SAS page, we see that all of these letter codes earn 20% of the distance flown as SAS miles.

So now I know that if I book a “Light” fare, the flight will be eligible for the challenge.

Now multiply that by 15 airlines from different countries... 😉

But sometimes, it’s not this easy…

For example, my Air Europa flight from Barcelona to Madrid did not display the fare codes anywhere on the website…

So here’s what I did.

If we go to Google Flights and search for the flight in question, we see multiple booking options. One is with the airline directly, and the other is through OTPs like Expedia.

As you can see, Expedia has the same fare available as Air Europa directly.

If we click through to Expedia, we will see the fare code conveniently displayed in the booking details. 👇

If this letter code (N) corresponds with the list of letters on SAS’s website that earn miles with Air Europa (which it does in this case), you can book it and know that you’re on the right track.

Finally, there’s one other way to find your fare code.

When I went to book my KLM flight, I couldn’t find the details I referenced earlier anywhere…

But when I pulled up the specific flight I wanted, I did see a popup that looked like this:

When you see a series of letters like this (especially labeled as “fare basis code”), the first letter in the sequence is usually the fare code.

If we cross reference that code with the SAS website, we see that fare code “R” does, in fact, earn SAS miles - and is therefore eligible for the challenge.

So here’s the takeaway:

If you’re hunting for flights, whether domestic or international, finding the fare code can give you specific information about how many miles you’ll earn and how the flights will be credited to different programs.

Sometimes, paying an extra few bucks for a higher fare will result in earning more miles and getting more benefits with the airline - and now you know how to find them!

✈️ 15% transfer bonus to LifeMiles

’Tis the season of transfer bonuses… it has been CRAZY how many new ones have been popping up over the last two months…

Now, there’s a tasty little 15% transfer bonus from MR Points to Avianca LifeMiles.

This isn’t a crazy big bonus… but LifeMiles has some REALLY solid rates to begin with, and this bonus makes those rates even a little better.

For example, if you suddenly feel the urge to exit America (not that anything happened this week that would cause that), you could book a business-class flight from New York to London on United for just 45,000 LifeMiles. 👇

With this bonus, you’d only need to spend 39,000 MR Points, which is a fantastic deal for business class.

But even if you don’t want to travel abroad, LifeMiles can be super useful for booking dirt-cheap economy flights in the U.S., like this flight from New York to Chicago for just 7,500 LifeMiles.

The bonus doesn’t drastically change this flight price, but you could transfer over a bunch of miles and rack up some savings over time.

Anyway, there’s not much more to say about this one.

LifeMiles has a couple of sweet spots (like the ones I just mentioned) that are better than any other Star Alliance program. This bonus from MR Points is just the icing on the cake! 🎂

That’s all, folks! It’s been a long newsletter and a long week, so I hope y’all are doing okay and have a peaceful weekend.

Take care of yourselves, and I’ll see you Monday.

With love,

41.3874° N, 2.1686° E