Status Lark
Status Lark
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Status Lark

How Status Lark Calculates Earning

Status Lark estimates how much status currency — Tier Points, Status Credits, Loyalty Points and the equivalents — a given flight will earn in a frequent flyer programme across the Oneworld, SkyTeam and Star Alliance networks. This page explains where our figures come from, how the calculation works, and how we keep them current. We publish this in full because trusting an estimate means understanding how it was produced.

Our figures are estimates

Every number on this site is an estimate. Airline earning rules are intricate, change without much notice, and often depend on the exact fare you buy rather than the cabin you see when booking. We model them as faithfully as we can, but we are not the airline. Always confirm against the official programme before booking a flight for status. Each programme page links to the airline's own earning page for exactly this reason.

Data sources

Our estimates are built from two layers:

  1. A structured earning model — a database of programme earning rules, status-currency zones by distance, codeshare class mappings and ticketed-point-mileage (TPM) overrides for major routes. This is maintained by hand against published airline documentation.
  2. Airport and distance data — airport coordinates from the public-domain OurAirports dataset. Where an airline publishes a specific TPM for a route, we use that; otherwise we calculate the great-circle distance between the two airports using the Haversine formula.

How the calculation works

For a given route, programme, cabin and booking class, the calculator:

  1. Determines the flight distance (TPM override if available, else great-circle distance).
  2. Looks up the earning rule for that programme, marketing/operating carrier and booking class.
  3. Applies the rule — a per-distance rate, a fixed amount per distance zone, a per-spend rate, or a combination — including any fare-brand multiplier.
  4. Returns the estimated status currency earned.

The same calculation module powers both the interactive calculator and the figures shown on our route and guide pages, so the two never disagree.

Last-verified policy

Each programme and route page carries a "Last verified" date. This is the date we last checked that page's figures against the airline's official source. We treat earning data as something that decays: if a page has not been re-checked within a set period, it is flagged for review so stale rates get corrected. Where we know a figure is estimated rather than confirmed, we say so.

What we deliberately do not do

We do not set cookies, run third-party trackers, or collect personal information to produce these estimates. The calculator runs on data you enter and returns a result — nothing is stored about you. See our privacy policy for detail.

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