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Like many Business Traveller readers, I travel frequently and tend to stick with the airlines and alliance with which I most often travel and have highest status. In my case, being based in Thailand, I mostly tend to travel medium- and long-haul with Oneworld and have premium status with British Airways (BA), Qantas (QF) and American Airlines (AA).

Because of Malaysia Airlines’ (MH) membership in Oneworld and regional location, I often find myself travelling with them as well. Until recently, I had not had any issues with my top-tier Emerald status being recognised or my flight mileage being credited to the partner programme I had chosen for that trip.

However, two months ago I travelled on a Oneworld around-the-world fare, departing Thailand on MH via Kuala Lumpur to Australia, then flying QF to North America, AA within North America, BA across the Atlantic and lastly Qatar Airways (QR) back home to Thailand. The global explorer business class fare I purchased was bookable in “I” class on all carriers and MH itself publishes the “I” class global explorer fare.

Upon completion of the trip and checking my mileage, I found that miles had been correctly earned for all flights except for those operated by MH. I made a “claim missing mileage” request to BA Executive Club, which was rejected, and after looking into the matter I found that MH’s “I” class fares do not provide miles accrual to Executive Club or any other Oneworld member’s frequent-flyer programme. I find it shocking that MH chooses to break the Oneworld promise and deny passengers mileage accrual when travelling on a Oneworld-published business class fare product. To me, this really is cheating.

I believe the exclusion of “I” class from accrual by MH breaks Oneworld’s consistency policy across member airlines. All other carriers in the alliance use the “I” class fare code for published business class fares (my Global Explorer ticket being an example) and to my knowledge, all members except MH provide mileage accrual for this fare class. Surely, if MH wants to benefit from carrying Oneworld passengers, it needs to comply with Oneworld standards and policies, not break them?

So, fellow Oneworld members, please be very careful when choosing to buy cheaper business class fares on Malaysia Airlines – they are likely to cheat you out of your status credits and points! John Chapman, Thailand