Independent Miles Mosaic guide. No programme partnerships, no account linking, no scraped balances. Sources cited below; corrections welcomed.
Asiana Airlines stops existing in December. Its aircraft keep flying and its routes keep operating, but its roughly 946.8 billion won of unused member mileage moves onto Korean Air’s books. What has not happened, fifteen weeks out, is that anyone has approved the terms on which your miles make that journey.
If you have read about this merger in English, you have probably read two numbers. Asiana miles earned by flying convert to Korean Air SKYPASS miles at one to one, and miles earned from partners such as credit cards, hotels and retail convert at one to 0.82. Those numbers are real. They are also a proposal, filed with the Korea Fair Trade Commission, rejected twice in earlier versions, resubmitted in January 2026, and still sitting there unapproved.
Asiana says so itself. Its member notice on the mileage integration sets out the ratios and the tier matching, and then states that the plan "is subject to review and final approval by the Korea Fair Trade Commission and it will take effect following the merger". Korean Air says the same thing from the other direction: its own customer notice explains that the dedicated mileage-integration information site opens after approval. It has not opened.
So the useful thing an article can do here is not to repeat the ratios. It is to sort every claim in circulation by how much weight it will bear.
Four kinds of claim, and only one of them is safe
Settled: safe to plan around
The dates, the absorption, and your own expiry clock
The dates. Asiana shareholders approved the merger in August 2026. The integrated Korean Air launches on 17 December 2026 and the Asiana legal entity is dissolved. Korean outlets place the legal completion on 16 December, with the combined carrier flying from the next day, and that is also the day Asiana leaves Star Alliance.
Asiana Club is absorbed into SKYPASS. There is no scenario in which Asiana Club survives as an independent programme. Asiana Club terms govern until integration and SKYPASS terms govern afterwards.
Your existing miles keep their existing expiry dates. This is the single most important settled fact and the one most often garbled. Asiana states that members may use their mileage until its original validity date. Miles earned since October 2008 carry ten-year validity from the date of earning, and the merger does not extend, pause or reset that. A mile due to expire in March 2027 expires in March 2027, whether or not it has been converted and whether or not the regulator has ruled.
Star Alliance earning stops well before the alliance exit. This is the deadline that bites first, and it is covered in full in our companion piece on the Asiana Star Alliance exit deadlines: accrual on Asiana flights into Star Alliance partner programmes ends on 15 October 2026, two months before the exit itself. The rule keys off the departure date, not the booking date. A ticket bought in September for a November Asiana flight earns nothing in a Star Alliance programme. If you want those miles in a Star programme, the flight itself has to depart on or before 15 October.
Published by the airlines, not yet approved
The ratios, the ten-year period, and the tier ladder
These are the numbers everyone quotes. They are published on Asiana’s own website, which is why they are quoted with such confidence, and they all sit inside the plan the Commission is still reviewing. Treat them as a working assumption rather than a plan.
One to one for flight-earned miles, one to 0.82 for partner-earned miles. Korean Air’s stated rationale is that the two airlines’ flight-accrual standards are broadly comparable, whereas the partner ratio reflects an analysis of what members actually paid to acquire the miles. Whatever the merits, an 18 per cent haircut on card-earned and hotel-earned balances is the most consequential number in the whole exercise, and it is not final.
Former Asiana miles are held separately for ten years. This is the point that goes wrong most often in English coverage. Asiana’s notice says existing balances "will be maintained as ‘former Asiana Mileage’ for 10 years from the date of integration and may be used until its original validity date". Ten years is the life of the ring-fenced currency, not a ten-year lease of life for balances that would otherwise expire. Because ten-year validity already applies to miles earned since 2008, the two periods roughly coincide, which is probably why they get conflated.
Conversion is all or nothing, and it is one-way. This is the detail that most changes what a member should do, and almost no English coverage carries it. Asiana’s notice says members may convert at any time during the ten-year period, that "Conversion must be made in full (entire remaining balance)", and that anything left at the end of the ten years converts automatically. There is no partial conversion, so there is no way to move flight-earned miles at one to one and leave partner-earned miles behind at 0.82. Whatever the final ratios, they apply to your whole balance as a single blended rate.
Unconverted miles buy less. Until you convert, the two currencies sit side by side in one SKYPASS account and you choose which to spend. But former Asiana Mileage is redeemable only on Korean Air award tickets in Economy and Prestige Class, upgrade awards, Cash and Miles for up to 30 per cent of an online fare, and the Mileage Mall. First Class awards are not on that list. A member holding out for a First Class redemption has to convert first, at whatever ratio is eventually approved.
The elite tier ladder. Asiana publishes the mapping: lifetime Platinum to Korean Air Million Miler, lifetime Diamond Plus to lifetime Morning Calm Premium, 24-month Diamond Plus and Diamond to a newly created Morning Calm Select tier with SkyTeam Elite Plus benefits, and Gold to Morning Calm, with existing validity periods honoured. Members holding status in both programmes get the higher of the matched tier and their existing SKYPASS tier, and after integration status is reassessed on Korean Air qualifying miles and Asiana flight miles combined, with the higher of that and the current tier granted. The Commission’s published objections have concerned the basis for the conversion ratio and the management of award seats and upgrades rather than the tier ladder, but the notice makes the whole plan conditional on approval, so the ladder is filed here rather than under “settled”.
Reported, not read at source
The filing detail
One block sits between the two categories above and is flagged rather than folded into either. Korean Air disclosed in a securities filing in July 2026 that without approval before the merger it may need to "maintain and operate the existing Korean Air and Asiana Airlines mileage systems separately". The Korea Herald’s reporting of that filing also carries a daily penalty exposure of roughly 925 million won if the regulator finds members worse off than they were before the pandemic.
The filing itself could not be opened at source for this article, so the fallback and the penalty figure are reported here rather than quoted from the document. The direction of both is consistent with the Commission’s published conditions; the precision is not something this article can vouch for.
Not known
Whether any of it happens on time
And this is the part almost nobody is writing about.
Whether the regulator approves before the merger. The Commission conditionally cleared the airline merger in 2022 on the condition that consumer-facing terms, mileage benefits included, would not fall below where they stood just before the pandemic. The Korea Herald reports that two mileage plans have been rejected against that test, in June 2025 and again in December 2025, and that the third was filed in January 2026 after the regulator asked for stronger controls on award seats and upgrades. It has been under review ever since. The Commission itself has published nothing on the subject, so the sequence is reported rather than read off a regulator’s page.
What happens if it does not. Read practically, the parallel-operation fallback means that if the Commission has not ruled by December, there may be no conversion channel at all on day one. The airlines merge, the programmes do not, and members hold two balances they cannot move between. That is a materially different world from the one the ratios describe, and on the current timetable it is a live possibility rather than a hypothetical.
Whether the ratios survive. The plan has been rejected twice. There is no basis for assuming the third attempt clears in its filed form.
What happens to the low-cost carriers’ currencies. Jin Air, Air Busan and Air Seoul are merging under the Jin Air name. The integration priorities published so far cover operating certificates, reservation systems and service manuals. Nothing has been said about Jin Air’s points scheme or Air Busan’s stamp scheme, which sit on unlike bases and have no obvious conversion. Air Seoul has no scheme to convert.
The 4 trillion won problem behind all of this
Half-year filings released in August 2026 put Korean Air’s deferred mileage revenue at 3.12 trillion won at the end of June and Asiana’s at 946.8 billion won, a combined 4.068 trillion won and the first time Korean airline mileage liability has passed 4 trillion.
Deferred mileage revenue is an accounting measure of miles issued and not yet used. A rising number means members are earning faster than they are redeeming. Industry officials quoted in that reporting attribute part of the recent rise to deliberate hoarding, with Asiana holders deferring redemptions in order to fly Korean Air metal after the merger on the expectation that the network and the upgrade inventory will be better.
That explanation is reported rather than measured, and no survey or redemption-rate series has been published behind it. If it is right, though, it has a consequence worth planning around. A large deferred balance that starts unwinding at once produces exactly the award-availability squeeze the hoarding is meant to avoid. Should the conversion channel open in December and a substantial share of Asiana’s 946.8 billion won become bookable SKYPASS inventory in a single quarter, competition for premium award seats out of Seoul in 2027 would be worse than it is now, not better. On that reading, the members best placed are the ones who redeem before the crowd rather than after it. The same dynamic sits behind most of the moves in our guide to surviving a devaluation.
The three clocks, side by side
The awkwardness of a merger like this is that it runs three separate timers at once, and only one of them appears on any published timeline.
The three deadlines an Asiana Club member is running against, and what each one actually governs
Date
What ends
What it keys off
Status
15 October 2026
Earning on Asiana flights into Star Alliance partner programmes
The departure date, not the booking date
Settled and published
16 December 2026
Asiana’s Star Alliance membership, and the Asiana legal entity
The merger completion
Settled and published
17 December 2026
Asiana Club as a separate programme; integrated Korean Air launches
The integration date
Settled, but the conversion mechanics are not
Your own expiry date
The miles themselves, batch by batch
Ten years from the date each mile was earned
Settled, unchanged by the merger, and on no published timeline
Three of those four are on Asiana’s and Star Alliance’s calendars. The fourth is only in your account, and it is the one that takes the balance.
What a Singapore or Southeast Asia member should notice
Two things, and neither is obvious from the Korean coverage.
The integrated Korean Air becomes Korea’s only full-service carrier and is dominant on Korea to Southeast Asia routes, which removes a competitor from a corridor a lot of regional travellers use. More immediately, it removes a Star Alliance option from that corridor. A Singapore-based KrisFlyer member who has been crediting Asiana flights loses that route on 15 October 2026, and after 16 December the surviving carrier is a SkyTeam airline covered by our SkyTeam guide rather than the Star Alliance one. If Asiana was part of how you reached KrisFlyer Elite Gold, that path closes this year and the replacement is not a like-for-like swap. Our comparison of KrisFlyer against Asia Miles and Avios is the place to start if you are choosing a new home programme, and the qualification calendar will tell you how much of the current year you have left to make up the shortfall.
What to do now
Find your own expiry date, this week. It is the only date in this story that binds you regardless of what any regulator decides, and it is the mechanism behind more quiet losses than any devaluation. Asiana’s own tools remain live, and they work today under rules that are certain, which is more than can be said for anything in December. Our reference on which points and miles actually expire sets out how the four different expiry mechanisms behave, and the free points expiry tool holds the per-programme rules.
Do not plan around 0.82. If a redemption makes sense at today’s Asiana award prices, the fact that a proposed ratio might shave 18 per cent off a partner-earned balance is an argument for acting, not for waiting to see. If it does not make sense today, an unapproved ratio does not make it sensible.
Sort your balance by how it was earned, and accept that you cannot split it. The proposed treatment differs sharply between flight-earned and partner-earned miles, but conversion has to be all or nothing, so the split inside your balance decides the blended rate you would accept rather than giving you something to hedge with. Work out roughly what proportion of your miles came from cards, hotels and retail. The higher that proportion, the worse a converted balance looks and the stronger the case for spending the miles as Asiana miles instead. If you have been pooling or transferring between household accounts, do that arithmetic before you convert rather than after.
Move any Asiana flight you want credited to a Star Alliance programme to a departure on or before 15 October. The cut-off keys off the departure date, so a November Asiana flight has no Star Alliance option however early you book it. The remaining choice for later departures is to credit to Asiana Club, and therefore into SKYPASS. If you have flights that already departed on or before the cut-off and the miles have not appeared, file the missing-mileage claim promptly; the companion article covers the claim deadline.
Watch for one thing only. Korean Air has said its mileage-integration site opens after approval. When that site appears, the plan has been approved and the details are real. Until it appears, they are not. That is a cleaner signal than any amount of press speculation, and it will reach you faster than an English-language news cycle will.
Holding three clocks, two balances, two status positions and an alliance change in your head from two separate airline logins is the part people get wrong, and a status ladder you are part-way up is easy to abandon by accident when the programme underneath it changes shape. Seeing programmes side by side with their deadlines attached is the reason Miles Mosaic exists. It tracks miles, points and elite status across 31 programmes, 24 airline and seven hotel, plus eight transferable card currencies, and it never asks for an account password. Explorer is free and ad-supported; Pro is $14.99 a month and ad-free. If a soft landing is what you are hoping for out of the tier match, it is worth knowing where you actually stand before December.
Verified: 1 September 2026. Asiana’s member notice and Korean Air’s customer notice were read for the ratios, the ten-year period, the tier ladder and the approval condition. The Korea Fair Trade Commission had published no decision on the mileage integration plan as of this date. Where a claim rests on press reporting of a filing rather than the filing itself, this article says so in the block it sits in.
Mid-December 2026. Asiana shareholders approved the merger in August 2026, and the integrated Korean Air launches on 17 December 2026 with the Asiana legal entity dissolved. Korean outlets place the legal completion on 16 December, with the integrated carrier flying from the next day. Asiana leaves Star Alliance on 16 December 2026.
What is the Asiana to SKYPASS conversion rate?
The filed plan is one to one for miles earned by flying, and one to 0.82 for miles earned through partners such as credit cards, hotels and retail, meaning 820 SKYPASS miles for every 1,000 Asiana miles. Conversion has to be for the entire remaining balance, so the two rates apply as a single blended rate rather than something you can split. This is a proposal, not a policy. Asiana states on its own member notice that the plan is subject to review and final approval by the Korea Fair Trade Commission, which has rejected two earlier versions and has not approved this one.
Do my Asiana miles expire because of the merger?
No. Asiana states that members may use their mileage until its original validity date, and the merger does not extend, pause or reset that clock. Miles earned since October 2008 carry ten-year validity from the date they were earned. Your own expiry date is the one date in this story that binds you whatever the regulator decides.
Is it true that Asiana miles get ten years to be used?
This is the most common misreading. Under the filed plan, the ten-year period is how long former Asiana miles would be held as a separate, ring-fenced currency after integration, with any residual balance converting automatically at the end of it. It is not an extension of anyone’s expiry date. The ten-year window is itself part of the plan awaiting approval; your existing expiry dates are not, and hold regardless.
What happens to my Asiana elite status?
Asiana publishes a tier-matching table on its member notice: lifetime Platinum maps to Korean Air Million Miler, lifetime Diamond Plus to lifetime Morning Calm Premium, 24-month Diamond Plus and Diamond to a newly created Morning Calm Select tier carrying SkyTeam Elite Plus benefits, and Gold to Morning Calm, with existing validity periods honoured. Members with status in both programmes get the higher of the matched tier and their existing SKYPASS tier. Like the conversion ratios, the ladder sits inside the integration plan the regulator has not yet approved.
Can I still earn Star Alliance miles on Asiana flights?
Only for departures on or before 15 October 2026. The cut-off keys off the departure date rather than the booking date, so a flight departing after it cannot credit to a Star Alliance programme however early it was booked. Asiana leaves the alliance on 16 December 2026, and Star Alliance has 25 member airlines rather than 26 from 17 December.
Should I redeem my Asiana miles now?
If a redemption is good value at today’s Asiana award prices, the uncertainty is a reason to act rather than wait, particularly for a balance built mostly from credit card and partner earning, which is the balance an unapproved 0.82 ratio would cut. If a redemption is not good value today, an unapproved conversion ratio does not make it so. The one genuine deadline is your own expiry date.
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