<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Standby4321:
If the airline happens to make a mistake that falls in your favor, that is one thing. It is not your job to clean up records when it is contrary to your interests, any more than you should show up at the police station and volunteer to pay a fine because you were speeding earlier in the day. On the other hand, if you are deliberately misrepresenting the facts to beat the airline out of miles, then that is another matter entirely and it is clearly unethical. The title of the post is "Cheating for FF miles". It takes some seriously tortured logic to say that cheating is not unethical or that it is somehow okay to do that. </font>
So the dividing line is your own actions: letting extra miles fall into your account is OK, doing something to mislead the airline for them is not?
As for the flip side of the coin, I think there are some common airline practices that border on unethical; charging more for one-ways than returns, and changing more for X-Y than X-Y-Z flights spring to mind. (And not just charging, but levying penalties on those who bend these rules too!) My own conscience would not be terribly bothered if, say, I got the miles for a throwaway return, which I had to buy in the first place only because there were no cheaper one-ways available.