Earning Points & Miles on Official Travel Orders

Frequent flyer programs allow travelers to earn specific benefits based on the number of miles they accrue during their travel on a particular airline or group of airlines. Earning frequent flyer miles can help you cut expenses and enjoy additional perks such as lounge access, free checked bags, and priority boarding.

That’s pretty basic stuff and evident if you are flying for leisure. What about when you are on official travel? Can you still earn frequent flyer miles if traveling for the government? The bottom line is yes; you can accumulate frequent flyer miles as long as it doesn’t cost the government extra money.

The official language from the Joint Travel Regulation is “A traveler can keep any frequent-flyer points or miles, hotel rewards, or rental car upgrades accumulated during official travel, as long as those promotional items are available to the general public or to a class consisting of all civilian employees or Service members. If a traveler voluntarily gives up a seat on an airplane, then the traveler is responsible for any additional costs incurred, such as additional lodging or meal expenses. Also, a traveler cannot select specific flights or hotels to earn points if it will cost the Government additional money.”

Some key takeaways here are earning frequent flyer miles for official travel is possible. Still, you shouldn’t go out of your way to select an airline, rental car agency, or hotel with which you have a loyalty account, especially if it costs the government more money to do so.

Military members are still required to select a City Pair flight, if available, the cheapest rental vehicle and hotel within the authorized per diem rate. So how do you ensure you are earning frequent flyer miles while on official travel?

Sign up for frequent flyer accounts

I highly recommend that military members sign up for frequent flyer accounts with major U.S. airlines and hotels before traveling on orders. This way, when you get last-minute orders from HRC, it will be something you need to mess with as you scramble to get everything ready and report on time.

You’ll want to sign up for accounts with the three major American airlines (American, Delta, and United) and some lower-budget airlines. Here’s a good list of the airlines and where to sign up:

• American Airlines AAdvantage
• Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan
• Delta SkyMiles
• JetBlue TrueBlue
• Southwest Rapid Rewards
• United MileagePlus

Also recommend signing up for accounts with Hilton Honors, World of Hyatt, and IHG Rewards on the hotel side. Of course, there are other major hotel brands, and you should sign up for the hotels you visit the most on orders.

Several apps will assist you in tracking these frequent flyer numbers and the number of points in each account. My favorite is Award Wallet, but there are numbers. If you want to go low-tech, you can add them in an excel file or the notes app on your phone, save it on the cloud, and reference it whenever you need to book a flight or hotel room. So you don’t miss out on earning all the points and miles you receive on travel orders.

Add loyalty accounts to DTS

Once you have signed up for these loyalty programs, you can enter them into your account information on the Defense Travel System. To do so, take the following steps:

1. Access your DTS profile. You can get to it one of two ways
   • • When you log into DTS, hover over Traveler Setup and select Update Personal Profile.
     • When you’re in a DTS travel document, select Additional Options from the main navigation bar, then Profile from the sub-navigation bar.
2. When the My Profile screen appears, select the My Preferences link.
3. Select the Rewards Program button at the bottom-left corner on the My Preferences screen.
4. Enter your loyalty program information on the screen that displays.
5. For your next DTS authorization requests, when making your travel reservations, use the Frequent Flyer Number (for airfare), Frequent Renter Number (for rental cars), or Frequent Guest Number (for lodging), drop-downs that allow you to apply a loyalty program account number to your reservation.

Retroactively credit miles flown

If you’ve taken a flight within the past 9 – 12 months, you MAY be able to credit the flight to your loyalty program retroactively. You’ll need all of your boarding passes and ticket confirmation numbers to request mileage credit. So make sure you save them either digitally or paper copy and keep email confirmations handy. Each airline has a different policy, but most can submit an online request, but you may also have to call depending on the flight taken.

Bottom Line

Earning airline miles from flights is an excellent way to build your points and miles balance. All the better if the government is paying the bill and you collect the rewards. Be sure to sign up for all the airline, hotel and rental car loyalty programs you could potentially use and save them for future reference. Request any missing miles, if you are new to the points and miles game, that you may have taken in the past year.