Don’t forget that you can claim mileage credit retroactively

This post isn’t news, but rather a reminder because new people get “into the game” all the time. I recently had a paid flight where I forgot to enter my frequent flyer number and where I had forgotten to sign my kids up for accounts before the flight, but I was able to sign the kids up for accounts a week later and get credited with the miles earned from the flight. Don’t let those miles go unearned.

A revenue fare booked with points via Amex Travel

The last leg of my big summertime trip was on Hawaiian Airlines. I booked business class tickets from Tokyo to New York (via Honolulu) via Amex Travel; I had found great price of about $1,480 one-way, so after the Business Platinum card’s pay-with-points rebate, we paid a net 96,200 points per passenger (initially 148,000 each and we received a rebate of 51,800 points per passenger).

That’s not much more than what most programs charge for a business class award ticket and since these flights were “paid” revenue fares, we knew we could also earn miles, bringing the “net” cost down further.

Choosing where to credit

I had used wheretocredit.com to determine which program I should credit with the miles. According to their site, I could earn 150% of mileage flown in a handful of different programs, which would be about 13,200 miles based on the distance from Tokyo to Honolulu and from Honolulu to New York.

Out of the options for earning, I had narrowed down the choice to Virgin Atlantic. While I’d rather have credited to American Airlines than Virgin Atlantic, wheretocredit.com noted that international flights on Hawaiian would earn American Airlines miles, but it looked like the flight from Honolulu to New York would be ineligible to earn miles with American. I had originally figured that we’d be more likely to use the Virgin Atlantic miles than our other options for mileage earning, but then things changed: when it became apparent that the merger between Hawaiian and Alaska would go through and further when Hawaiian told a news outlet in Hawaii that miles between the Hawaiian and Alaska programs would eventually combine and “would not lose value” (in other words, we expect Hawaiian miles to eventually become “Alaska miles”, or whatever name they choose for a combined program, at a 1:1 ratio), I suddenly became far more interested in crediting the miles to Hawaiian.

Creating HawaiianMiles accounts for the kids

While I had meant to associate my HawaiianMiles number with my reservation and to make sure that I got the rest of the family signed up for HawaiianMiles accounts before our flights, I realized on the morning of departure that I hadn’t done either. I had gotten my wife’s HawaiianMiles number added to her reservation, but I hadn’t even signed the kids up for HawaiianMiles accounts and I later realized that I never added my own HawaiianMiles number to the reservation. I tried to sign the kids up for HawaiianMiles in a hurry as we arrived at the airport, but discovered that children under 13 years old can not sign up online. The online form says that you must contact HawaiianMiles customer service to create an account for a child, which needs to be done between the hours of 7am and 4pm Honolulu time.

As it was night time in Hawaii, I couldn’t do that and hoped I could take care of everything retroactively. Thankfully, that worked out.

Several days after returning home, I pulled up the Hawaiian Airlines website and logged in. Within my account, I saw an option to chat with support. Thankfully, it was easy for a chat agent to help me set up accounts for both kids. The process was a little slow, but all they needed was basic info like name, date of birth, address, email, and phone.

Requesting retroactive mileage credit

Once I had HawaiianMiles numbers for the kids, I went to the contact page on the Hawaiian Airlines website. From the drop-down menus, it was easy to determine that I needed to contact them about “HawaiianMiles” and then choose “Earn HawaiianMiles on past travel”.

I filled out separate forms for each of my sons and for myself and submitted the mileage requests. The form asked for confirmation numbers and ticket numbers, both of which were easily found in the email confirmation from Amex Travel.

The Hawaiian Airlines site indicates that mileage can be requested up to 120 days after the flight and that it will take 30 days for the mileage to credit to your HawaiianMiles account.

I was pleasantly surprised when we all received emails a day later indicating that the miles had been credited to our HawaiianMiles accounts. Sure enough, each of us got the 13,199 miles credited to our HawaiianMiles accounts less than 24 hours after submitting the request.

I should note that I imagine the process may have been slower if we were crediting partner flights to Hawaiian. I imagine the speed in getting the mileage credit was likely due to the flights having been on Hawaiian metal.

Bottom line

We recently flew revenue tickets on Hawaiian Airlines and I forgot to even sign the kids up for HawaiianMiles accounts before the flight. Thankfully, with help from a Hawaiian Airlines chat agent, I was able to create frequent flyer accounts for them after the flight. Then, I submitted requests to earn miles on past travel and everyone was able to earn miles for the flights we had already taken. I think most of the major programs provide a mechanism to request mileage for a past flight, so if you forget to enter your frequent flyer number before the flight, don’t forget to follow up afterwards.

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