Can I earn miles with the skyteam program if a friend of mine buy the ticket for me?

score:8

Accepted answer

As far as I know, Skyteam has the same rules as pretty much every other airline or alliance: the miles for each ticket go to the person who actually uses that ticket to fly, provided they are registered in the program. It makes no difference who paid.

In your example, let's say the trip is 1000 miles long. No matter who pays, if you both register, and you both fly, then each of you gets 1000 miles. If you register and your friend does not, you get 1000 miles and your friend gets nothing.

See how it works? There is no way for you to earn miles for the ticket used by your friend, or vice versa.

Note that if possible, you should register for the miles program before the trip, and add your frequent flyer numbers to the ticket. While it is usually possible to claim the miles retroactively, the process is less convenient.

Upvote:2

There are several reasons for the "flyer earns" general rule. Consider some scenarios if "payer earns" would happen:

  1. I'm a frequent traveler so I put an ad on Craigslist where I offer X% off your ticket if I book it (and you PayPal me the rest). I pocketed the miles which to an infrequent traveler is practically useless anyways.

  2. I am a big company and I am spending ten of millions of dollars a year on flying my people all around. All the miles land in the laps of the board of directors.

  3. Mileage runs already happen can you imagine the insanity that would commence if you wouldn't be required to actually fly it? Check for example http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/21758192-post4.html

And so on.

Edit: a mileage run is when someone flies for the sole purpose of accruing miles to achieve status. People already try to find the maximum mileage for the dollar. Very few people do this mostly because of the required time investment and because flying 10-20-40 hours in one go is not fun to most people. If you would not need to fly, everyone would do it.

Upvote:2

Some airlines run a separate scheme where the payer can also earn some kind of credit towards future flights. This is typically aimed at small businesses.

But the usual rules are that the passenger, not the purchaser earns. The reason is very simple, to drive repeat business from the passenger, both in his personal capacity and in his ability to influence the purchaser.

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