Honestly, these changes have been a long time coming. Turkish Air changed their fare classes a while ago, adding in their "Comfort Class" premium economy product and pulling out their first class cabin. Many of their partners were quick to update the earning charts; Continental and United Airlines weren’t. That has finally been resolved as of today.
The new earning rates are mostly downgrades on the Continental side of things. Y and B fares no longer earn 150% EQMs and G fares – one of the most discounted economy class tickets – now earn nothing at all. There are a few other changes, with F, W and Z fares also no longer earning but I believe those fares are also no longer published so less of an issue.
The Comfort Class fares will only earn at 100% (US Airways and Air Canada both have an earning premium assigned to those fares) which is unfortunate. That said, the change does at least add all three of the Comfort Class fares to the list; previously one was absent.
On the United side of the coin the earning rules are similar, with one additional downgrade. Elite members will no longer earn the 500 mile minimum credit on flights operated by Turkish. Not a huge deal, as most TK-operated flights are longer than that, but still a minor downgrade.
Also of note is that with both programs the V fare class will be deprecated as an earning bucket come January 1, 2012. This is another discount economy fare bucket and losing it will be unfortunate.
Finally, there has been an addition to the earnings tables. Flights marketed by Turkish but operated by AnadoluJet (a regional/express carrier) will be eligible for earning in both programs. The cheapest economy fares (L, Q, T, V) do not earn while non-discount fares (Y, B, M, K, H, S, E) earn at the 100% rate, again with no 500 mile minimums.
All of these earning rate changes have been loaded into the mileage earning calculators on the Wandering Aramean Travel Tools site.
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Thanks for the updates.
Also P fare is gone, was a step above W, we had a few segments booked into P going to Nairobi in April.
What sucks about these changes is that you really just can’t buy tickets on these carriers anymore, TKs site isn’t the greatest and you can’t pick your fare bucket. I’m sure this is TK saying no mileage earning on the flights, but just means I no longer fly them.
Indeed, I missed the P fare dropping out. My guess is that it is moving to the low end of the bucket list as they shake things up. The real question is whether they re-map them for future travel or not. When Continental did a similar shake-up a while back they re-mapped all the old fares into the new ones so things credited based on the rough value of what you paid (and EUAs processed that way, too). If the P bucket really no longer exists on TK then there is a good chance they’ll remap it to something else. If not, well, that’s going to suck.
I know that I’ve held off on buying some partner flights because of the uncertainty in the earnings. Unfortunate, but it is what it is these days.
I was wondering why my miles hadn’t posted to UA for my recent LAX-IST flights.. I guess this change effectively happened some time ago? The website was just updated in the past day or so.
Keep in mind, Jordan, that the rules state earning is based on what is listed on the website at the time of travel. If they didn’t update the site prior to your trip date then you have a decent leg to stand on to fight for those miles. It is likely that they’ll end up being credited as a customer service peace offering, but that’s better than letting them disappear into nothing.
Yeah, I called the Onepass service center and they said send in a scan of the original page.. and hope for the best. I barely qualified for Silver this year.. Gold is in reach if I can get these flights credited, and I do another mileage run.