I have three upcoming trips in the next two months already booked, paid for, and confirmed online. Unfortunately I will not be able to take these three trips.

My problem is they are coach trips from BOS <> PHL and the fare was only $90 booked online, so it isn't worth it to pay $100 to change the ticket.

I normally get 2,200 miles on this trip (500 bos>phl, 500 phl>bos, 1,000 online booking, and 100 each checkin online) ... is there any way to get these miles even though I am not actually gonna be on the plane... My thoughts are that I bought and paid for the tickets, so actually the airline is making out because they can last minute fill the seats.

Ideas? What if I check in online that day but just don't show up at the airport? Can I still get the miles?

Nope

Body on plane = miles in the account.

That is the way it is and should be.

Once I needed a third trip for the buy-3-get-1-free promotion, so I bought a rather expensive ticket and checked in online (because I didn't have time to take the flight) and just hoped that the miles would come through. No luck; I contacted US to ask about the miles (and just said that I had checked in and so I was expecting the miles; I didn't lie), but they wouldn't give me the miles since they had no record of me taking the flight. I wasted my $.

Miles are posted to your account once the gate agent collects your boarding pass and after your seat number (I believe) is then typed into the US computer system at the podium next to the gate.

[This message has been edited by NYCommuter (edited Jan 28, 2004).]

Welcome to FT!

Your question is a natural one, and many of us dream that it would work. But this would lead to simply buying elite status at rock bottom fares. For that, as well as other reasons, the airline won't go fo it.

What you can hope for is either bad weather on your travel days or a schedule change. Once the airline cancels or changes the flight, you can generally use your full value again toward future travel.

Good luck!

Have your twin fly instead of you.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by fried:
Have your twin fly instead of you.</font>

Rather than a twin get a "Mini-me" version of yourself. At 1/8 the size, he'll actually be comfortable in a coach seat, at 1/8 the intellegence, he might not mind dealing with the flying

:-)

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by NYCommuter:
Once I needed a third trip for the buy-3-get-1-free promotion, so I bought a rather expensive ticket and checked in online (because I didn't have time to take the flight) and just hoped that the miles would come through.</font>

You are joking, right? You bought an expensive ticket you knew you couldn't use just to get a free one?

Am I the only one who is baffled by this?

Unless, you thought you were going to actually use the expensive ticket. Then this makes sense.

[This message has been edited by nawlinsdoc (edited Jan 28, 2004).]

The free ticket I hoped to get was a LOT more expensive than the ticket I actually bought. So if US had given me the miles for taking the trip, I would have saved several hundred dollars.

The ticket I bought (the cheapest from my home airport that met the fare class qualifications for the promotion) was about $300; I was hoping to get a ticket that would usually be about $750 with the buy-3-get-1-free certificate.

[This message has been edited by NYCommuter (edited Jan 28, 2004).]

1. If you check in online, and don't show up, there is a small chance the gate agent will not properly reconcile/close out the flight, and it will be left in the computer as it you boarded. I have had this happen before where I checked in for a flight and did not board, yet US's records showed that I was on board. Actually this just happened to me once, but it can happen and you probably have little to lose by trying;
2. In BOS they only check ID at the security checkpoint, not at the gate. I am not positive at PHL, but actually I think at PHL they check your ID at the gate. If you got a friend to go in with you at BOS to the security area, and you somehow got them in with a gate pass or via the club as a guest, then possibly they could fly as you since they don't check ids in BOS. However, if something weird happened you or your friend could be saught out by authorities for questioning in this era of heightened security. Also if the airline discovered it, they might internally report you to any sort of fraud unit unless they have laid off all those paper pushers. It is very unlikely something "wierd" like that would happen, but especially if you have a rookey mileage runner flying it would concern me a bit. I don't know if it would be worth the 1 segment to go to that trouble. Also don't try this if the agents know you;
The best thing would be either a weather problem as noted, or if you can find a friendly agent to waive the $100 change fee and let you use the $90 credit as a $90 credit, or reschedule the PHL flights to a time when you can actually do them. Failing that again I don't see much harm if you try checking in online.
I guess one last remote option would be to get on the plane, and somehow get off undetected. Has anyone ever heard of this working? I suppose on a really crowded flight on a busy day it might work, but again its a real might.

I've certainly gotten on a plane and then gotten off-- to drop off luggage planeside when it wouldn't fit in the overhead bin (on a regional jet), and I think I've done it on a mainline jet, too. You could do this. But then it might mess up the passenger count (who knows how accurate it is, anyway, but it runs the risk of having US find out that you didn't take the flight).

If your schedule allows, an option is to buy another airline ticket from PHL back to BOS right after arriving in PHL. You spend more money in total, but you collect miles on those tickets rather than throwing them away.

I did a modification of this strategy once, where I needed to change the destination on a $75 ticket. I bought a ticket from the old destination to the new destination for $90 and flew both tickets.

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