Korean Air Skypass Award Booking Instructions

If you’re a U.S.-based traveler, chances are that you don’t fly on Korean Air often. However, this airline currently operates flights between its hub in Seoul and several U.S. cities, including Boston, New York, Atlanta, Dallas, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, San Francisco and more. And, even if you don’t ever plan on flying with Korean Air, it’s worth paying attention to this airline’s frequent flyer program, as it may be the best program through which to book an award flight on Delta Air Lines, Virgin Atlantic or one of Korean Air’s other airline partners.

In 2000, Korean Air was one of the founding airlines of SkyTeam Alliance. And, due to its status as a member of this alliance, members of the Korean Air Skypass frequent flyer program can both earn and redeem Korean Air miles with any other airline in SkyTeam Alliance. On top of that, the Korean Air Skypass program prices all partner-operated award flights according to a series of fixed award charts, which means that you can often find great value per mile when redeeming for award flights through this program.

Unfortunately, Korean Air Skypass isn’t a transfer partner of any of the major credit card rewards programs. So, if you want to earn miles with the Korean Air Skypass program, you’ll probably have to do so by crediting SkyTeam flights to your Skypass account.

Nonetheless, if Skypass is your frequent flyer program of choice, then you’ll want to be familiar with the process of redeeming your miles for award flights. So, in this article, we’re going to give you a step-by-step guide on how to book award flights through the Korean Air Skypass program.

Joining Korean Air Skypass

Before you can either earn or redeem miles through Korean Air Skypass, you must first be a member of the program. If you haven’t yet enrolled in Skypass, you can do so by visiting the Korean Air website and clicking the “Sign up” button in the top-right corner of the homepage.

On the next page, you’ll be asked to agree to a series of terms and conditions. We recommend only consenting to the required terms if you want to avoid receiving marketing emails and other communications.

Once you check all of the required terms and conditions agreements and click the “Confirm” button, you’ll be asked to enter an email address for email verification. You’ll then receive an 8-digit verification code, which you’ll have to enter to continue making a Korean Air Skypass account.

After you’ve verified your email address, you’ll be asked what kind of Skypass account you want to create. If you’re creating a Skypass account for the first time, you should click the “I do not have a SKYPASS number” option.

After that, you’ll be asked to provide some personal information, including your name, user ID, password, date of birth, gender, email address, mobile phone number and preferred language. Once you’ve entered all of that information correctly, click the “Confirm” button at the bottom of the page.

Finally, you’ll be assigned a Korean Air Skypass membership number, which you can use to earn Skypass miles and to sign in to your account. We recommend writing this number down somewhere where you’ll remember it.

How to Earn Korean Air Skypass Miles

As a member of the Korean Air Skypass program, you’re eligible to earn miles that can later be redeemed for award flights (as well as for many other things). In order to purchase an award flight, you’ll need to have a minimum of 5,000 miles in your account balance (which is the amount required for a one-way domestic flight within South Korea operated by Korean Air in off-peak season). For most award flights, you’ll need considerably more miles than that. The cheapest available one-way award flight from the North America region during off-peak season requires 35,000 miles.

There are many ways to earn miles through Korean Air Skypass. However, certain earning methods are far more effective than others. In the following sections, we’re going to take a brief look at the most effective ways to earn Korean Air Skypass miles.

Flying with Korean Air and Partner Airlines

Since Korean Air Skypass isn’t a transfer partner of any of the major transferable credit card rewards programs, the best way for most U.S. travelers to earn miles through this program is to take flights with Korean Air or one of its airline partners. In order to earn Korean Air miles on any paid flights, you’ll need to select Korean Air Skypass as your frequent flyer program of choice and then enter your membership number either when booking your flight or when checking in.

When taking paid flights on Korean Air, the number of miles you’ll earn depends on the actual distance of your flight and the fare class that you’re booked in. The following table is used to determine your mileage earnings for any cash flight on Korean Air:

For instance, if you were to take a Korean Air flight with a distance of 1,000 miles in Prestige Class (fare code Z), you would earn 1,000 Skpyass miles on that flight (1,000 miles flown X 100% = 1,000 Skypass miles). However, if you were to book this same flight in Economy Class (fare code Q), you would only earn 700 Skypass miles (1,000 miles flown X 70% = 700 Skypass miles).

In addition to earning Skypass miles when flying with Korean Air, you can also earn Skypass miles by flying with Korean Air’s partner airlines. Since Korean Air is a member of SkyTeam Alliance, you can earn Skypass miles by taking flights on any SkyTeam Alliance airlines. Here’s the current roster of SkyTeam Alliance airlines:

• Aerolíneas Argentinas
• Aeroméxico
• Air Europa
• Air France
• China Airlines
• China Eastern
• Delta Air Lines
• Garuda Indonesia
• Kenya Airways
• KLM
• Korean Air
• Middle East Airlines
• Scandinavian Airlines (SAS)
• Saudia
• TAROM
• Vietnam Airlines
• Virgin Atlantic
• XiamenAir

On top of the SkyTeam Alliance partners listed above, you can also earn Skypass miles by flying with several non-SkyTeam Alliance partners. Here are the non-SkyTeam partners with which you can earn Skypass miles for paid flights:

• Alaska Airlines
• American Airlines
• China Southern Airlines
• Emirates
• Etihad Airways
• GOL
• Hawaiian Airlines
• Japan Airlines

When taking paid flights with any of the partner airlines listed above, you’ll earn Skypass miles based on the actual distance of your flight as well as the fare class you’re booked in. Each of these partners has its own unique earnings chart, which you can view on the partner airlines page of the Korean Air website.

These earnings charts work the same way as the earnings chart for Korean Air flights. So, to find out how many miles you could earn, you multiply the actual distance of your flight by the percentage associated with your fare class.

It’s worth noting that, when electing to earn Korean Air Skypass miles on SkyTeam flights, you’ll be forfeiting the opportunity to credit those flights to other SkyTeam frequent flyer programs. For instance, many U.S.-based travelers may want to credit these flights to Delta SkyMiles or Virgin Atlantic Flying Club instead.

Staying with Hotel Partners

Another effective way to earn Skypass miles is to book hotel stays through eligible hotel partners and credit those stays to the Korean Air Skypass program. Typically, in order to earn Skypass miles on stays, you’ll need to select Korean Air Skypass as your rewards program of choice when making your hotel booking or you’ll need to tell the concierge at your hotel that you want to earn Skypass miles for your stay when you check in.

It should be noted, though, that you may not be able to earn hotel points on your stay if you choose to earn Skypass miles. For example, if you choose to earn Korean Air Skypass miles on a stay at a Hyatt hotel, you won’t be able to also earn Hyatt points on that stay. And, in many cases, the number of hotel points you’d earn on a stay is more valuable than the Skypass miles you could earn on that stay.

Nonetheless, if you’d rather earn Skypass miles than hotel points, the following table includes the hotel chains and third-party booking companies with which you can earn Skypass miles and each partner’s earnings rate:

In particular, Korean Air’s third-party booking engine partners, including Agoda, Booking.com, Hotels.com and Trip.com offer a good opportunity to earn Skypass miles. With these booking engines, you’ll typically earn between 1X and 3X miles on stays that wouldn’t otherwise earn points or miles in any program (as most hotel rewards programs don’t offer points on stays booked through third-party booking engines). So, if you tend to book your hotel stays (or homestays or hostels) through one of these booking engines, you may want to consider crediting those stays to Korean Air Skypass.

So, if you tend to book your hotels through a third-party booking engine or you’d rather earn airline miles on your hotel stays than hotel points, it may be a good idea to credit eligible hotel stays to the Korean Air Skypass program.

Other Ways to Earn

There are several other ways to earn Skypass miles, including renting cars from eligible partners, transferring points from hotel loyalty programs (including Accor Live Limitless, World of Hyatt and more), booking tours, exchanging currency, buying insurance and more. However, generally many of these earning methods aren’t particularly effective. Nonetheless, if you use Korean Air Skypass as your primary frequent flyer program, you may want to familiarize yourself with these other earning methods so that you can pick up some extra Skypass miles here and there.

How to Book Award Flights Through Korean Air Skypass

Now that you’re familiar with how to join the Korean Air Skypass program and earn miles, you may be wondering how you can redeem those miles for award flights. The first thing you’ll need to do is visit the Korean Air website and log in to your account by clicking the blue “Log in” button in the top-right corner of the homepage.

You can log in using either the user ID that you chose when creating your Korean Air Skypass account or you can sign in with your membership number. Once you’ve signed in, you’ll be returned to the Korean Air website homepage where you’ll see the flight booking tool box.

Inside this box, click the toggle button that says “Book with Miles” to search for award flights instead of cash flights. If you’re searching for an award flight operated by Korean Air or one of its non-SkyTeam airline partners, you can proceed to enter your flight information. To book an award flight on a SkyTeam Alliance partner, you’ll need to click on the “SkyTeam Awards” button.

From there, the process of searching for an award flight is nearly the same as searching for a cash flight. Enter your type of flight (round-trip, one-way or multi-city), departure airport, arrival airport, travel dates, number of passengers and desired cabin class. Then, click the “Search” button to see your search results.

When searching for Korean Air or non-SkyTeam award flights, you can also click the “Flexible Dates” box in the top-right corner of the flight booking tool box if you want to see the prices of Korean Air award flights over a range of dates. This feature can help you save miles if you’re willing to be flexible with your flight dates. Unfortunately, this option isn’t available when searching for SkyTeam awards.

Once you click the “Search” button, you’ll be shown a list of results that match your search query. You can filter these results by their departure time if you prefer to fly later in the day. Otherwise, the results will be shown from earliest to latest departure time.

To add a flight to your itinerary, simply click the bubble in the top-left corner of that flight box. You can also click the “View Details” button to the right of each flight if you wish to see more detailed information about the operating airline, layover times, baggage allowance and more.

Once you’ve selected all of the flights for your itinerary, click the “Calculate” button near the bottom of the page, which will then calculate the total number of required miles as well as the total cash taxes and fees you’ll have to pay for your selected itinerary. If the final prices look good, click the “Next” button.

After that, you’ll need to enter some passenger information for anyone traveling on your itinerary, including name, gender, date of birth, email and phone number. On this page, you’ll also have the option to add seat selection and excess baggage for an additional charge.

Finally, you’ll need to enter a payment method to cover any applicable taxes and fees. If you live outside of South Korea, you’ll need to select “Credit/debit cards (overseas)” when entering your payment card. You’ll also need to enter a billing address associated with your card.

After you’ve done all that, you can confirm your award flight booking. At that point, you should receive a confirmation number, which you’ll need to check in to your flight. You should also receive a confirmation email containing this number and your flight information.

If you decide that you want to cancel your award flight, it may incur a penalty depending on the time of cancelation. For international flights, if you cancel more than 90 days prior to departure, you won’t pay a fee. If you cancel an international flight between 90 days prior to departure and the expiry date, you’ll pay a fee of 3,000 miles. And, if you cancel an international flight after the expiry date, you’ll need to pay 10,000 miles.

If you cancel a domestic Korean Air flight before the ticket’s expiry date, you’ll have to pay a cancellation fee of 500 miles. If you cancel a domestic ticket after it expires, you’ll pay 3,000 miles.

If you wish to make a change to your award flight itinerary without canceling the ticket, you will have to pay a fee of 30,000 South Korean won (about $20) for international flights (or 30 Canadian dollars for flights from Canada or 350,000 Indonesian rupiahs for flights from Indonesia). There’s no change fee for domestic flights within South Korea.

The Bottom Line

The Korean Air Skypass program probably isn’t the best program out there for U.S.-based travelers, mostly because you can’t transfer points to this program from any of the major credit card rewards programs (such as American Express Membership Rewards or Chase Ultimate Rewards). So, if you want to earn enough Korean Air Skypass miles to purchase an award flight, chances are you’ll need to credit flights on Korean Air or one of its partners to the Skypass program.

However, when flying on SkyTeam Alliance airlines, you’re probably better off crediting your flights to a different frequent flyer program instead of Skypass, such as Virgin Atlantic Flying Club or Air France-KLM Flying Blue. These programs have credit card transfer partners, so you can supplement the miles you earn from flights with even more miles from credit card transfers.

Nonetheless, if you tend to fly with Korean Air often and you want to earn Skypass elite status, crediting flights to this program might be a good idea. And, when you eventually save up enough Skypass miles to book an award flight, you can typically find pretty good rates through this program. And, of course, you can refer to the instructions in this article if you need help with the process.