Having Issues Adding Your Frequent Flyer Number On Other Airlines? You're Not the Only One

For flyers who participate in multiple airline loyalty programs, a frustrating reality has emerged: not all airline partnerships are created equal, especially when it comes to digital booking platforms.

I have had issues myself in the past trying to change frequent flyer numbers on British Airways and Malaysian Airlines. Airline booking systems are layers upon layers of legacy technology (if you can even call it that) which do struggle at times to talk to each other. In the case of my Malaysian Airlines booking, I tried adding it on the Malaysian website, but the number would not save. I tried using a different oneworld airline's website, in this case Royal Jordanian. The RJ website is a bit more primitive, but what this does mean is that there are fewer parts of the website that have to talk to each other for you to get to the part you want. Alas, a failure. Lastly, I tried calling Malaysian Airlines, but struggled to get a strong enough phone line. Eventually, this worked though, hurrah.

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But, a recent exchange on Facebook brought this pain forward again. A passenger discovered that Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) won't accept Virgin Atlantic Flying Club numbers when booking through their app or website, instead forcing customers to use their Euro Bonus number. You see, SAS have recently been purchased by Air France/KLM, and so they have transitioned into being a part of Skyteam, the same club of airlines that Virgin Atlantic is a part of.

This isn't a technical glitch - it's a deliberate limitation. According to SAS's official response, while the airline partners with Virgin Atlantic through the SkyTeam alliance, their digital platforms prioritize Euro Bonus membership. The airline explained that "the integration of partner loyalty numbers during booking is limited on our digital platforms."

The Workaround

Much like myself, travellers determined to earn Virgin Atlantic miles on SAS flights, there are two options:

1. Book through a SkyTeam partner website that supports Virgin Atlantic numbers (essentially booking through the Virgin Atlantic website)

2. Contact SAS customer service after booking to manually add the Virgin Gold number to the reservation

Why This Matters

This can be a lesson for all, not just those trying to book onto SAS. I would recommend the steps above whenever you have issues adding a frequent flyer number.

What I dislike about this is the extra challenges this causes for the flying public. Say you book onto an airline based in Asia, and they have limited opening hours for their call centre, you then have to spend extra time trying to work out the complexities involved with multiple time zones, let alone the phone bill for such a call.

Additionally, booking on a partner website isn't the solution they think it might be. Quite often airlines have the same ticket for sale at wildly different prices, whether this is because of a sale or simply the fare code they choose to put up for purchase.

What seems to work on paper doesn't always translate to a great customer experience online.

Let us know down below some of issues you've had, hopefully we can all help each other!

Sam

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