SEOUL: Korean Air will likely have to run two separate mileage programmes even after its merger with Asiana Airlines takes effect Dec 17, as South Korea’s antitrust regulator withholds approval of the integration plan.
In a securities filing on Tuesday, the national flag carrier stated that absent approval from the Fair Trade Commission before the merger date, it “may need to maintain and operate the existing Korean Air and Asiana Airlines mileage systems separately”.
This would avoid making the programmes less favourable than they were at end-2019. The year serves as the baseline the commission set when it conditionally approved the Korean Air-Asiana merger in 2022. Korean Air agreed to guarantee that consumer-facing terms, including mileage benefits, would not fall below what existed just before the pandemic disrupted the airline industry.
The commission has twice sent Korean Air’s mileage plan back to the drawing board, first in June 2025 and again in December, citing insufficient protections for mileage points set to expire under the merged system.
Under the current proposal, miles earned through flights would convert one to one, while miles earned through airline partner programmes would convert at a ratio of 0.82 Asiana miles to one Korean air mile.
Asiana members would keep access to their existing miles for ten years.
Korean Air warned that a prolonged split could bring regulatory fines and blunt the merger’s intended synergies.
If regulators find that running two systems left customers worse off than they were under 2019 terms, Korean Air could face fines of up to roughly 925 million won (US$624,000) per day.
Running parallel systems would also mean duplicate information systems and staffing costs, and delay synergies the airline is counting on from the merger. — The Korea Herald/ANN
