Glossary
What Is the Lark Score?
The Lark Score expresses how far a flight takes a brand-new member towards meaningful elite status. It is the tier credits an itinerary earns, divided by the credits a member needs from a standing start to reach the tier that grants alliance-wide lounge access when flying economy, expressed as a percentage.
A Lark Score of 10% means the itinerary covers a tenth of the journey from zero to that tier. A score of 100% means a single itinerary would reach it outright.
The anchor tiers
Every loyalty programme names its tiers differently, and the thresholds vary enormously — 280 XP buys the same alliance benefits in one programme that 2,000 Points buy in another. To compare like with like, the score anchors each programme to the tier that confers its alliance's shared mid-tier benefit level: lounge access across the alliance network, regardless of cabin flown.
| Alliance benefit tier | Example programmes (credits from a standing start) |
|---|---|
| Oneworld Sapphire | The British Airways Club — Silver at 7,500 Tier Points; Privilege Club — Gold at 300 Qpoints; Cathay — Gold at 600 Status Points |
| SkyTeam Elite Plus | Flying Blue — Gold at 280 XP; SkyMiles — Gold at 10,000 MQD; EuroBonus — Gold at 45,000 Level points |
| Star Alliance Gold | Miles & More — Senator at 2,000 Qualifying Points; MileagePlus — Premier Gold at 12,000 PQP; KrisFlyer — Elite Gold at 50,000 Elite miles |
Because each anchor points at the same tier ladder the calculator displays, the score can never disagree with the thresholds shown elsewhere on this site.
A standing start
The denominator is always the credits needed from zero. Programmes whose counters reset at each tier (Flying Blue, for example) are counted cumulatively — Flying Blue Gold requires 100 XP to Silver and a further 180 XP to Gold, so its standing-start requirement is 280 XP.
Reading the score
- Scores are shown to one decimal place; anything below 0.1% displays as <0.1%.
- A large itinerary can legitimately score above 100% — it would earn the anchor tier with room to spare.
- Where a programme's earning depends on the fare paid (The British Airways Club, Club Iberia Plus, AAdvantage and others), the score varies with your fare. The calculator computes it from the fare you enter; static pages show no score for fare-dependent figures rather than assume a fare on your behalf.
What the score deliberately leaves out
Many programmes attach secondary conditions to tier qualification: minimum sectors on the programme's own airline, spend gates, or flight-count alternatives. The Lark Score never models these — folding them into a single number would hide more than it revealed. Instead they appear as footnotes wherever a score is displayed, so you can see at a glance whether the percentage tells the whole story.
Provisional anchors
Where the mapping between a programme's tier and its alliance benefit level has not yet been confirmed against an official source, the score carries a provisional mark. Treat provisional scores as indicative.
Programmes without a score
A dishonest number is worse than no number. These programmes currently have no Lark Score:
- SKYPASS — SKYPASS restructured its tiers in 2024 and the tier conferring SkyTeam Elite Plus is not yet confirmed — no score until verified.
- Eastern Miles — Eastern Miles measures qualification in kilometres flown plus a mandatory annual spend in yuan — this calculator computes statute miles, so a percentage would be systematically misleading.
- Cedar Miles — The Cedar Miles tier conferring SkyTeam Elite Plus is not yet confirmed — no score until verified.
- SUMA — The SUMA tier conferring SkyTeam Elite Plus is not yet confirmed — no score until verified.
- Aerolíneas Plus — The Aerolíneas Plus tier conferring SkyTeam Elite Plus is not yet confirmed — no score until verified.
- PhoenixMiles — PhoenixMiles measures qualification in kilometres flown — this calculator computes statute miles, so a percentage would be systematically understated.
- Voyager — Voyager's tier thresholds are not publicly confirmed — no score until verified.
- Asiana Club — Asiana Airlines ceases operations in December 2026 and leaves Star Alliance; elite tiers migrate to Korean Air SKYPASS.
Where you will see it
The Lark Score appears in the calculator's segment ledger, on route earning pages, and on best-programme comparisons. Try it below.
Add further segments and adjust detail in the full builder after calculating.