Originally Posted by
Marathon Man
yup, I gotcha.
but what I am asking is... in case one were to be planning on flying an award ticket on DELTA and wanted to BE SURE this would not ever happen, then do you suppose one could contact the airline BEFORE hand and get something in writing stating it is valid, so that if one is ever in that situation you were in, they could whip out said letter and say,
no, airline idiot employee... I have something here that validates my ticket!"
I wonder if that's doable. I mean, you'd think the ticket itself is good enough, but cases such as yours prove otherwise--until ultimately someone helped you and you had not blown up first.
One would think that even the contract employees that we sometimes think work for the airline directly (but actually work for a company like Swissport/ "Swissport International Ltd., which is owned by Ferrovial, a leading European infrastructure and service corporation based in Spain, provides ground services for over 70 million passengers and 3.2 million tonnes of cargo a year on behalf of some 650 client companies. With its workforce of around 30 000 personnel, Swissport is active at 187 airports in 43 countries on five continents, and generated consolidated operating revenue of CHF 1.9 billion (EUR 1 266 million or USD 1 583 million) last year...... for example)....would be aware of what a FF award ticket is and the weight of the ticket. But they are not. I have had some really strange stuff happen with award tickets....but I have used a lot of them and sometimes everything is very smooth. I even had an AA FF award on CX in LAX and they refused boarding with the comment "ticket no good"......."flight full".......? This was a bad one as the flight was oversold and they were not only making me the first one denied boarding....but going with a "ticket no good" explanation. This time I called the AA desk and they did have the airport manager from AA come physically down to the CX terminal area. After a brief discussion I was given a boarding pass. I guess the supervisor explained that an award ticket is a real ticket.......I was not privy to the conversation. There are a lot of personnel out there that believe an award is some type of non-rev with last boarding rights when problems occur....it's not only on Delta....but actual Delta employess (working directly for Delta and not contract employees) have looked at FF tix....and felt it was a lesser form of reality.
As to your specific question, I would say there is no letter that you can obtain because at the administrative level where the ticket is issued, they know it is a real ticket for the class and seat awarded. As many people who do not get into these situations are the ones you are talking to...they would believe the concern to be moot.