Warning: Find “Fare Basis Code” Before Booking Partner Flights!

Yesterday’s post, Mileage Running 101 – The art of flying for free travel, raised a question about finding the “fare basis code”. If you plan to earn United Airlines miles by flying on a partner airline, you should probably check United’s policy on accruing miles by flying partner airlines. The airlines classify each fare with a code (in this case we’re talking about just 1 letter) that represent the rules along with that ticket – this is the fare basis code. The codes determines all kinds of rules like cancellation policies. But the only one you need to know is that this particular code determines how many miles you earn or whether or not you earn miles at all with partner airlines.

I said that one could find the chart that shows how many miles United gives for partner flights by simply googling “earn united miles on [Turkish Airlines]” or whatever airline you wish to fly. However, this doesn’t tell us everything we need to know.

If you look at the chart for earning United miles on Turkish Airlines, it tells us fare codes and how many miles they earn. They seemingly tell us that all Turkish flights earn 100% United miles… but it’s not completely true.

There are generally two ways people get confused about the fare earnings. The first way people get confused is not knowing the difference between the economy fares. The second is way is even worse – when airlines leave out some of codes earning description. 

You may notice that some airlines actually will list different earning rates for seemingly the same class. For example, this chart tells how many AA miles you earn when flying Cathay Pacific. It seemingly says Economy give 100% but then has a bunch of class codes that don’t earn miles. Both are in economy but the one-letter code is different, who knows the difference?

For starters, when you’re looking for a flight on the ITA Matrix, click all the way though and see the fare code (as shown below). Or for example on united.com, it shows the “Fare Class” on the right when searching for a flight. I don’t normally book flights on Expedia but you can usually find the fare basis in the rules or terms and condition that you have to agree you’ve read.

See how on this Turkish Airlines flight the flight back is in “booking code Q” and the first in “P”. When using ITA or buying directly from the airline, they should tell you the code. Just go back and match it up with the earning chart for the desired mileage program.

Below is the chart for earning United miles on Turkish Airlines flights (found here):

Yes, it’s true that every fare listed earns 100% , including discount economy, but look a little closer. The bottom half is the odd policy and the top is the current policy. The only difference between the two charts is that booking codes W, G, and P are not on the top one! This is only a problem given that ITA showed that half of the trip is booked in P and thus no miles are earned!

What to do? Book a flight on an airline that does earn miles into your program or choice (which should be either United or AA). If it’s just a great deal on one airline, try playing around to see if another booking class comes up. I was able to find a flight on Turkish in S and Q, which both earn 100%. Unfortunately, this isn’t during the $399 sale for WAS-IST.

Does this post help you understand the booking classes a little better?

One more note: if you don’t know what partners an airline has, just google it. There are three main Alliances in which airlines have many global partners you can earn or use miles on. Wikipedia actually does well at listing all the codeshares for each airline, both in and out of the alliance.