I recently took a trip to France on Air France, one of Delta's partners. Since I have a Skymiles account I assumed I would be credited the mileage. I was asked to provide my Skymiles account number, and even verified that mileage credit would be given with an Air France agent over the phone.

Several months later, I still have no credit. I inquired several times, sent copies of my boarding pass, etc.. Finally, I received this letter from Delta.

"Thank you for your correspondence concerning your participation in the Delta SkyMiles program.

We appreciate your interest in having your Air France flights added to your account. We have reviewed your travel documents and unfortunately have found that some or all of the flights are ineligible for mileage credit based on the restrictions below:

'NO MILEAGE CREDIT FOR AIR FRANCE FLIGHTS BOOKED IN...A,B,E,G,L,N,O,R,U,W,X CLASS OF SERVICE."


That pretty much only leaves First & Business class, and so called "full-fare" classes of service. So, if you care about mileage, make sure you read the fine print...even with that, there's a good chance you won't get credited.

Actually, it isn't quite that bad. Booking class Q is one of the lower classes for Air France long-haul. Within Europe, however, L and N are the most common classes, so I wouldn't count on earning Delta miles for most Air France intra-European fares.

When traveling from the US, your best bet is to ALWAYS book the Delta codeshare. This will ensure full credit for all legs. Similarly, if you should always book the Northwest codeshare on KLM planes, to avoid the non-earning V class on KLM.

This is very frustrating, of course, and I empathize with you, but there are often ways to work around the problem.

What's interesting is that my boarding passes stipulate "Y" class, which I'm told is acceptable, but my tickets were purchased as "X" class.

It's not only frustrating...it's deceptive. Before you click the "buy" button, it should be clearly disclosed that the tickets are not eligible for mileage. I would have paid a bit more for an eligible class.

This is something you have to watch out for across all of the alliances; it's not just a Delta/Skyteam thing.

I accrue miles to United, and in the Star Alliance the operating carriers generally set the rules for which fare classes accrue mileage and at what percentage. If I'm buying a ticket on a partner, I always make sure I know the fare class (not always that easy to determine) and double check with United before I buy.

<i>my tickets were purchased as "X" class.</i>

This is the code for reward tickets on Air France. It must have been L or N.

This happened to me with BA and Cathay Pacific and AA Aadvantage, but I understood in advance that I wouldn't get miles. But I got a better fare or routing. But, yes ... they do that and we just have to be aware. You have to choose between the miles and a better fare or routing. It's too bad, because we still FLY!

You're quite right, Travelgourmet...it was "N" class

What makes it really frustrating is that the prohibitions are based upon the intra-European fare classes. For intra-European flights, L & N are the cheapest fares. For Trans-Atlantic flights, L is actually a higher fare class than Q, while A is premium economy. In other words, you can earn 100% miles for the cheapest fare class, but nothing if you spend $200 more for L, or $1000+ more for A.

I understand that Delta is probably trying to make things easy for their computer systems, but it would be nice if they revisited their general prohibitions and moved toward something that more accurately reflected the fare codes by market.

Couple of other random inconsistencies for trans-Atlantic (TATL) flights:

W = Full-fare Premium Economy
B = Nearly full-fare economy

The confusion comes not just from the differences in usage between Europe and long-haul, but Air France uses some revenue codes for award tickets: W, for example, is the coach award for elites for non-TATL routes. Not sure how Air France ended up with such a patchwork of codes, but I imagine it is as annoying for DL as for us.