Miles for Star Alliance Codeshare Flights: What is Booking Class Mapping & How Does It Work?

It’s not easy to get started with the topic of earning miles. And even when you think you’ve figured it out, more and more exceptions come to light.

A particularly tricky case involves codeshare flights. We’ve briefly touched on this topic in the help section of our miles calculator, and in principle, the following rules apply for miles credit:

• Oneworld: Miles credit is based on the flight number, regardless of which airline actually operates the flight.¹
• SkyTeam: Miles credit is based on the flight number, regardless of which airline actually operates the flight.¹
• Star Alliance: Miles credit is based on the operating airline, regardless of the flight number.

1 – Exceptions are possible, e.g. you often don’t get miles if the operating airline is not a member of the alliance.

For flights with SkyTeam or Oneworld, the process is relatively simple. You might just need to decide whether it’s better to book a KLM flight through Delta or KLM if you’re trying to optimize the number of miles.

It’s different with Star Alliance, where booking class mapping comes into play. This determines how booking classes are internally assigned and, consequently, how many miles are credited. This can be straightforward (such as within the Lufthansa Group) or more complicated in other cases. Sometimes, you can’t be sure how many miles will end up in your account when you book. However, there are ways to narrow it down as much as possible, which this article will discuss.

Example: Lufthansa Premium Economy, operated by United

For instance, Lufthansa offers the following premium economy flight to New York. The flight number is LH7607, but it is operated by United:

On the Lufthansa website, this is displayed as booking class N:

It is tempting to consider the flight as booking class N for miles credit purposes. However, neither of the two possibilities that come to mind are correct:

1. It is not a Lufthansa flight in booking class N, since the operating airline is what matters in Star Alliance.
   Therefore, the input LH:N:BER-EWR in our miles calculator would not be correct.
2. It is not a United flight in booking class N, which would be a basic economy flight (and also a domestic flight).
   Therefore, the input UA:N:BER-EWR in our miles calculator would not be correct.

So, what is correct? You can figure this out in other ways:

Finding the “Correct” Booking class

If you’re lucky, someone else had the same question before you. There are relevant threads on forums like Flyertalk, e.g. it’s mentioned there that Lufthansa’s class N maps to United’s class R.

But you can also approach the question in other ways. Most frequent flyer programs provide tables for earning miles. The websites of Air Canada Aeroplan and United MileagePlus are particularly clear in this regard.

A look at the Aeroplan site shows that class N is the cheapest of all premium economy classes:

You can then check the table for United flights and look for the corresponding class. This confirms the mapping to United’s booking class R:

Therefore, the input in our miles calculator should be:

The flight price in the miles calculator is optional and only important for credit with Miles&More and United MileagePlus. If you need to be absolutely sure, you can also ask the airline. However, you can’t always count on a timely response.

Translated by Ditmar

Cover Picture: CC0-Lizenz / Pixabay-User corgaasbeek