If you just started collecting frequent flyer miles, you might be surprised to find that there are two types of miles or points in your frequent flyer account. While each airline uses slightly different names for the two, in essence, they are award miles and status miles.
Continue reading to learn more about the two.
Award Miles vs. Status Miles: How Are They Different?
Frequent flyer programs allow you to do two things – collect miles that you can then exchange for, among other things, flights and earn a status that comes with perks such as lounge access or extra luggage allowance.
Award miles are the miles that work like currency. You can earn award miles through flying and other activities, and then you can spend them on flights with the frequent flyer program’s airline or its partners. You can also typically spend them on other goods and services but those rarely present a good deal.
How many miles you earn will, depending on the frequent flyer program you use and the airline you fly, either be calculated based on the distance you fly and the booking class your ticket is in or the price of your ticket. Once earned, some award miles do not expire at all (i.e. you can keep saving them as long as you want) while others may have limited validity (i.e. you either spend them before their expiration date or you lose them). This, too, depends on the specific frequent flyer program.
Status miles, on the other hand, are what measures your progress toward getting an airline status. You cannot exchange them for flights and other rewards. Instead, you need to collect a certain number of status miles within a given time period to get a certain status. While some airlines have longer cycles, typically status miles are valid for one year (either calendar/fiscal year or year starting on the date you joined the program) after which you start with zero
How many status miles you get is generally either calculated based on distance in a fashion similar to award miles or a specific number of status miles (usually called points in this case) is awarded based on the type of flight you take (domestic economy class, long-haul business class, etc.). How long the status is valid depends on the airline – it could be one year from getting it, until the end of the year after you the year you get it, or something else.
Some Programs Allow You to Convert Award Miles for Status Miles
Generally, frequent flyer programs do not allow you to convert award miles into harder-to-earn status miles. As such, if you are just a few status miles short of getting a frequent flyer status, your only option might be to book an extra flight with the airline or one of its partners and earn the miles by flying.
Some airlines, however, offer an option of spending award miles to buy additional status miles. For the programs that allow this, the rate is usually more than one award mile per status mile and there are usually restrictions in terms of how many status miles you can get this way in a year too.
Below are some of the frequent flyer programs that allow the conversion of award miles into status miles:
- Finnair Plus members can, once a year, exchange the two at a rate of 3 award points for 1 tier point. A minimum of 1,000 tier points must be exchanged and a maximum of between 15,000 and 75,000 tier points per year applies depending on the member’s status. Additionally, a service fee applies to most members.
- Miles & More members with selected co-branded credit cards can exchange between 5,000 and 25,000 award miles per year into status miles at a 5 award miles to 1 status mile ratio.
- Turkish Airlines Miles & Smiles members can exchange award miles for up to 40,000 status miles per year. The rate is 5 award miles per 1 status mile.
Many Airlines Sell Award Miles But Few Sell Status Miles
With a good portion of frequent flyer programs, you can buy award miles for cash. Generally, the price is too high to make buying enough miles for a flight worth it. Instead, it’s a useful option to have if you are missing just a small amount of miles on top of the miles you already earned in other ways. That said, some programs like LifeMiles and Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan frequently sell miles at a discount which can make buying award miles to exchange them for a flight a good strategy.
Frequent flyer programs selling status miles are much rarer to see. Still, some do sell status miles to those that are close to achieving their status. This option – like converting award miles to status miles – typically comes with restrictions. For example, Ethiopian Airlines allows its members to buy up to 10,000 status miles a year and Turkish Airlines allows members to buy up to 5,000 or 10,000 status miles a year depending on the member’s status.
Award Miles and Status Miles Are Not Always Called “Miles”
The last thing worth mentioning in this article is that while in this article I call them all award miles and status miles, some airlines use different terms either as part of their branding or to better reflect the distance units used in the airline’s country.
For example, “award miles” used by the programs of British Airways, Iberia, and Qatar Airways are called Avios, and until Finnair starts using Avios next year, their “award miles” are simply called points. LAN used to call its “award miles” kilometers before merging with TAM to form LATAM which uses miles.
Frequent flyer programs tend to be even more creative with status miles. Just to mention a few examples, Flying Blue uses XPs, British Airways Executive Club uses tier points, ANA Mileage Club uses Premium Points, and JAL Mileage Bank uses FLY ON Points.
Summary
Award miles and status miles are very different from each other. While the former is used as a currency that can be exchanged for a variety of rewards, most notably flights, the latter is used as a measure of progress toward getting a frequent flyer status. Typically, the latter is considerably harder to collect than the former.
While some airlines allow their members to convert award miles into status miles or buy status miles for cash, even if they do, there are typically major restrictions in terms of the number of status miles that can be acquired this way.
Lastly, while conceptually they all work the same, some airlines opt to call their award and status miles in different ways (points, kilometers, Avios, etc.) for one reason or another.
