Most airline frequent flyer program redemptions are region-based, so you pick your origin and destination and look at an award chart to determine how many miles the ticket should cost. But there are often times when this involves a lot of back and forth. Which program should you use? What region is Dushanbe in? What’s Asia 1 vs. Asia 2?

United felt it necessary to have a ton of comparatively compact regions, dividing almost every continent. This can be cheaper if you’re looking to make a short hop, but it doesn’t offer as many opportunities as other programs.

Agents sometimes don’t have a good understanding of geography, or the program itself doesn’t list a country that it flies to. It can be a pain.

I’m a huge nerd for geography, so I put together maps of the 13 region-based frequent flyer programs you’ll likely ever interface with, so you can see what region they think each country is in. It’s in PowerPoint (and PDF; smaller file size viewable on mobile devices) so you can toggle back and forth between your favorite programs. I tried to be pretty diligent and note when countries are not explicitly listed on the region definitions at all, but please let me know if you find errors. What follows is a short summary of the takeaway messages.

It Matters Where Programs Are Based

US-based programs create a lot of small regions close to home and bigger ones further afield, likely due to redemption volume (more people go from the US to the Caribbbean, Mexico and Hawaii than Nepal, so each of those closer areas are their own region for most US-based carriers). The European carriers slice and dice Europe into several zones. Singapore sees a Southeast Asia Zone 1 and 2 and North Asia 1 and 2 given it’s location. TACA splits up Central and South America more than most and Korean and ANA see Japan and/or South Korea as microzones.

Note how Alitalia divides Europe into several regions.

TACA and Avianca, by contrast, have a huge European region including all of Russia.

Conversely, this means many programs leave broad swaths on the other side of the world as singular huge regions, so some of their best redemptions can be had there given the low volume of tickets and the likelihood that executives won’t be as familiar with their partners’ route networks. Here are some great examples:

Hawaii — Korean treats Hawaii as part of North America. Turkish sees it as part of Oceania. Singapore Airlines, Flying Blue, and Alitalia stick it in Central America/Caribbean. Everyone else makes it its own region.

Singapore Airlines treats Hawaii as part of Central America and the Caribbean, which can give you two trips for the price of one if you make a stopover in a domestic United hub.

South America — US Airways, Singapore, ANA (post 4/12/15), Miles & More, and Turkish all see South America as one region.

Big Europe — AA, UA, US, Lifemiles, ANA, Miles & More (counter to this trend), and Delta all see Europe as one region that includes ALL of Russia.

Africa — American, US, ANA (post 4/12/15) all see Africa (sans Egypt) as one giant region.

Big North America — ANA, Korean, Turkish, and Flying Blue see Mexico as part of North America.

East Asia — Perhaps counter to this trend, Korean, Turkish, and ANA all see East Asia as a pretty large megazone.

Some Countries Just CAN’T Be Placed

There seems to be a high variability in where the following countries/regions lie, so if you’re planning on visiting, check the charts to see if you can save by taking advantage of their inconsistent placement.

Even though they pulled their award chart, Delta had a unique understanding of Asian geography and split the region based on whether a country was reachable from the US in one hop.

Turkey, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan tend to be part of Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia. Countries ending in “-stan” can be in North, South, Central Asia, Middle East, Southeast Asia (really, Delta?) with a ton of variability.

Delta, Flying Blue and Alitalia all include parts of North Africa in their definition of Europe, but this may be split among several zones. Israel is sometimes in an “expensive” European zone.

Russia spans anywhere from one to three zones on various award charts, perhaps justifiably so.

China, also a very large country, can sometimes be in North Asia, other times Southeast Asia, and sometimes its own region. This isn’t terribly correlated with where Hong Kong, Macau (or even Taiwan) are placed, so there could be some useful Avios arbitrage here or you may be able to save a few miles by tacking on an extra segment.

US overseas territories, notably Puerto Rico, Guam, Saipan, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and American Samoa have a very high variability in where they’re placed and many may require calling in to confirm (which may be useful once you know how things price ::wink wink::)

Getting Yourself to No Man’s Land

Some countries are simply not listed, or are unsurprisingly VERY difficult to get to on miles.

Air France has a particularly elusive and mysterious chart. Flyertalk was able to pull together a list of where each country prices out.

Papua New Guinea - Most programs don’t list it, but Skyteam and Oneworld do have flights there.

Northern South America, particularly Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana - Many programs don’t list them (including Lifemiles?) because they have nearly no alliance connectivity and some place them in the Caribbean, Central America, South America and even North America (not sure why AF thinks Suriname is there, but there it is).

North Korea is not surprisingly missing from most charts, though Air China does fly there. Bhutan is often omitted, but no alliance flies there.

Afghanistan is missing from Alitalia’s, Flying Blue and Lufthansa’s charts, even though Turkish and Air India fly there (no Skyteam or Oneworld connectivity though). Air France is spotty on Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan even though Skyteam DOES fly to them and Aerolineas Argentinas flies to Paraguay.

My Favorite Award Charts

Lastly, here are some favorite charts:

Wow, I am excited to see this in action! Some of the regional definitions are very generous and will open up some interesting trip opportunities.

Aside from the requirement for roundtrip travel, pretty tempting to get around Asia or Europe – probably your best option for collecting SkyTeam miles.

Also has really interesting region definitions that could be put to good use in South/Central America, Oceania and Far East Asia. It’s just too bad that their miles are hard to accrue (but let’s hope they change that!).

Could potentially be very useful for Middle East/Africa travel, and has generous interpretations of Europe, South America, North and Central Asia and domestic premium travel at 35k roundtrip.

Seems to be the only chart that thought hard about where its partners are and how easy or hard it is to actually get people to various parts of the world. Western Europe is a bit of a bargain and Asia 1 and 2 are mashed up based on where partners are, so you may find some arbitrage opportunities there if you have AMEX points lying around, particularly China or Japan to say Singapore or Thailand for 30k roundtrip in Business.

I am going to miss this chart next year. Large regions, flexible routing rules. India is part of Southeast Asia and South America is one region.

While there are a few annoyances with North Asia and the Caribbean/Mexico, it still remains a great chart for travel to the Middle East or South America.

Hopefully these maps will help you plan your next trip and where to bank your miles. With the new revenue-based earning schemes introduced by Delta and United, you’re going to be increasingly better served by getting familiar with foreign programs. With bank transfer partners, there are still plenty of deals to be had.

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