Aegean Miles+Bonus Refuses to Credit Partner Flights

schwechat, austria, 20 may 2019, thai airways boeing 787-8 dreamliner aircraft take off at vienna international airport
Thai Airways Boeing 787. Photo: Adobe Stock.

One of the benefits of an alliance like Star Alliance is the ability to earn and redeem points or miles on all the other airlines in the group. As long as you’ve booked an eligible fare class, you should be able to earn points and status credits with your choice of frequent flyer program from any of the alliance members.

Miles+Bonus, the frequent flyer program of Greece-based Star Alliance member Aegean Airlines, is often a popular choice among Star Alliance flyers. If you fly at least a few times per year on Aegean, you can earn Star Alliance Gold status relatively easily. Aegean Miles+Bonus miles are also quite valuable.

So, when AFF member apeman booked a paid Business Class ticket on Thai Airways, they had every reason to expect they would earn miles when crediting the flights to Aegean Miles+Bonus. Thai Airways is another Star Alliance member.

Thai Airways A350 Business Class seat
Thai Airways A350 Business Class seat. Photo: Matt Graham.

The Thai Airways flights between Sydney and Bangkok were part of a mixed-carrier booking on Thai Airways and Oman Air, but the Sydney-Bangkok sectors were operated and marketed by Thai Airways. The ticket shows TG flight numbers, so these weren’t codeshare flights.

One was booked in Z class, and the other in D class, which the Aegean Airlines website shows are both eligible to earn Miles+Bonus miles.

Miles+Bonus earn rates on Thai Airways
Thai Airways booking class earn rates for Miles+Bonus, as published on the Aegean Airlines website.

Miles+Bonus refused to credit miles for these flights

With this in mind, you can imagine apeman‘s surprise when Aegean Airlines refused to credit the miles for these Thai Airways flights. This member wrote on the AFF forum:

My 2 Thai flights I expected points/Miles be added to my Aegean Miles and Bonus as they are part of the Star Alliance program. As no points/miles were not automatically added to my account, I raised my concerns with Aegean and was told as per some fine print they do not have to allocate points/miles bloody hell !! .
I took this up with Star Alliance and they basically flogged me off.

According to this member, the response from Aegean Airlines was as follows:

As outlined in the Terms and Conditions of the program on our website here, specifically in Chapter 13 AEGEAN Partnership with airline companies-members of Star Alliance, Paragraph 1, ‘Individual Star Alliance member-carrier’s may also exclude mileage accrual on certain flight-ranges’.

The flights TG 476/475 fall into this category and If you have any concerns or require further explanation, please contact the operating airline.

We often see cases where people are surprised to find that their ticket was ineligible to earn points because it was booked in an ineligible fare class. Some airlines won’t even show you which fare class you’re buying at the time of booking, so this is an understandable mistake. But according to Aegean’s own website, apeman‘s ticket should have been eligible to earn miles.

Frankly, the fact that the Aegean Miles+Bonus terms & conditions allow the program to unilaterally “exclude mileage accrual on certain flight-ranges”, whatever that means, seems like a cop-out. This lacks transparency. It’s not normal for a loyalty program to randomly refuse to credit points or miles for flights in eligible booking classes for no apparent reason.

In my opinion, there are two reasons that this could happen. One is that Aegean has simply made a mistake – but then doubled down and refused to correct it. A second possible explanation is that Aegean has a list of routes on partner airlines that it won’t credit miles for, but hasn’t made this list public. Neither scenario is great for Miles+Bonus members.

We tried to get an answer from Aegean Airlines

We’d love to know why Aegean refused to credit these flights, so we contacted Aegean Airlines for comment. Unfortunately, the airline never got back to us, so we still don’t know the answer to this conundrum.

To be clear, we’re not saying that Miles+Bonus is a bad loyalty program or that you should avoid using it over this one case. But we’ve written this article because we think frequent flyers deserve to know that this kind of thing could happen. It’s something to consider if you’re thinking of using Miles+Bonus as your main Star Alliance program.

The editor of Australian Frequent Flyer, Matt's passion for travel has taken him to over 90 countries… with the help of frequent flyer points, of course!
Matt's favourite destinations (so far) are Germany, Brazil & Kazakhstan. His interests include economics, aviation & foreign languages, and he has a soft spot for good food and red wine.

You can connect with Matt by posting on the Australian Frequent Flyer community forum and tagging @AFF Editor.
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What was the fare class of your Thai Airways flight, and does it normally earn in Aegean's program?

The fare class on your ticket would need to be in the table under "how to earn" here:

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What was the fare class of your Thai Airways flight, and does it normally earn in Aegean's program?

The fare class on your ticket would need to be in the table under "how to earn" here:

Hi. They were Z and D class, which are entitled to earn miles, but Aegean informed me of some small print in their T and C's and refused to allocate miles. As mentioned Thai allocated miles to my Thai account

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Hi. They were Z and D class, which are entitled to earn miles, but Aegean informed me of some small print in their T and C's and refused to allocate miles. As mentioned Thai allocated miles to my Thai account

I'd be interested to know which T&C specifically prevented you from earning miles. Sounds strange.

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Not a middle name mismatch? Sometimes this can cause issues.

  • MILES ACCRUAL FROM STAR-ALLIANCE FLIGHTS:

    1. To register Miles in an Account, the corresponding flight must be realized by the Member. Miles are earned and registered on a fare-basis, based to the flight date completion, in accordance with the published Mile Accrual Charts per Star Alliance member-carrier, as they appear on the official Aegean website, specifically in the Miles+Bonus section. Tickets issued with a fare not included in the existing Star Alliance member-carrier’s Mile Accrual Charts do not earn Miles.
    2. The Miles are registered in the Account of the Member who actually flew (i.e. the Member must be the same person as the passenger), provided that the passenger’s data fully match the Member’s (as cited in his/her Account). It is clarified that in order to gain successfully the miles that correspond to this reservation, the first and last name has to be written exactly as on the Member's government issued identification and the Miles+Bonus account.
    3. Members may not transfer Miles in any way or assign them to any third party, nor combine them with any other Member’s Miles in order to jointly take advantage of an offer.
    4. Miles do not bear any commercial value and cannot be exchanged for money. Any disposal (sale, exchange etc.) of Miles or offers is automatically considered invalid.
    5. In the event of the Programme’s cancellation as specified in the General Terms, all the collected Miles shall be automatically cancelled and cannot be exchanged with offers.
    6. Each member-passenger must indicate his/her Account Number when reserving an airline ticket, and present the Card at check-in. Otherwise proper registration of the Miles will not be possible. Ticket coupons or receipts, boarding passes, and/or any other relevant documentary evidence should be retained by the Member until the Miles attributable to the Star Alliance flights appear in his/her account. Aegean may, at its discretion, determine whether the documents submitted by the Member constitute sufficient proof or not.
    7. In the event that earned Miles do not appear in the Account 7 days following the flight event, please fill out the online request form to retroactively claim the flight’s miles (through the Online Miles+Bonus Account Management on Aegean’s website, www.aegeanair.com). The corresponding miles will be credited to the Member's Account after two (2) weeks, at the latest, upon a reply from the Star Alliance member-carrier that executed the flight in question. Existing Miles+Bonus members can claim their miles retroactively for flights that took place up to 12 months prior to their retro-claim request (exception: Air New Zealand, LOT Polish and South Africa Airways, for which retro-claim is viable for flights taken place up to 6 months prior to retro-claim request).
    8. Any objections relating to Miles Account transactions should be notified to Aegean within the time set by each Star Alliance member-airline, as mentioned on the official Aegean website and specifically in the Miles+Bonus Section, otherwise they will be lost.
    9. Any request for the retroactive crediting of miles for a flight operated by a Star Alliance member-airline shall be accepted only for flights that have occurred since Aegean’s date of induction into the Star Alliance network (June 30th, 2010).

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I'd be interested to know which T&C specifically prevented you from earning miles. Sounds strange.

Hi .
As outlined in the Terms and Conditions of the program on our website here, specifically in Chapter 13 AEGEAN Partnership with airline companies-members of Star Alliance, Paragraph 1, 'Individual Star Alliance member-carrier’s may also exclude mileage accrual on certain flight-ranges'.

The flights TG 476/475 fall into this category and If you have any concerns or require further explanation, please contact the operating airline.

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Not a middle name mismatch? Sometimes this can cause issues.

No, just Aegean being shifty..

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Hi .
As outlined in the Terms and Conditions of the program on our website here, specifically in Chapter 13 AEGEAN Partnership with airline companies-members of Star Alliance, Paragraph 1, 'Individual Star Alliance member-carrier’s may also exclude mileage accrual on certain flight-ranges'.

The flights TG 476/475 fall into this category and If you have any concerns or require further explanation, please contact the operating airline.

How does Aegean expect its frequent flyers to know that TG475/476 are excluded from earning miles before booking? I can’t say I’ve seen this before.

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How does Aegean expect its frequent flyers to know that TG475/476 are excluded from earning miles before booking? I can’t say I’ve seen this before.

Yep, I asked Aegean to advise what flights fall under this smoke screen, never got a straight answer. Cheers

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My recent trip to Europe via Bangkok I used both Thai and Oman air using Business class. Oman still haven't joined One world, so points/miles were not a concern. My 2 Thai flights I expected points/Miles be added to my Aegean Miles and Bonus as they are part of the Star Alliance program. As no points/miles were not automatically added to my account, I raised my concerns with Aegean and was told as per some fine print they do not have to allocate points/miles bloody hell !! .
I took this up with Star Alliance and they basically flogged me off.
Luckily I had a dormant Thai membership and chased them for points/miles and was reimbursed , but their reward program is currently useless.
I am a Gold member of Star Alliance and was shocked at the way Aegean "flogged" me off.

I feel for you and appreciate you sharing this as many times these minor fine print details go unnoticed and we end up losing our credits.

Reply 3 Likes

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The Thai-operated flights weren't WY codeshares, were they?

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