Disclaimer – This is a Trip Report reporting the experience of the “4 Mile Island Experience” and the United First Class Service.
Whether or not you agree or disagree with how people got these tickets, United’s action or other merits, this is only a Trip Report, please place your displeasure at this thread below
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...redeposit.html


Route Map


Flights (4 Flights, 19000 Miles)
All Flights flown
United Airlines 862 - Hong Kong to San Francisco (First Class)
United Airlines 870 - San Francisco to New York Kennedy (First Class)
United Airlines 265 – New York Kennedy to San Francisco (First Class)
United Airlines 869 - San Francisco to Hong Kong (First Class)

Trip Parts
Part 1 - The lead up to the UA 4 Mile, to getting ticket numbers to day of flight
Part 2 - The Big Day, testing out the foggy Environment
Part 3 - What are the 2 most important vocabularies in the United Airlines dictionary, Cancellations and Delays
Part 4 - 2 days of Half Awake/Half Asleep in New York City
Part 5 - Finally something called a regular travel day
Part 6 - Vicente comes for a visit
Extra Extra - Final CPM calculations


Links to Other Written Trip Reports
Click Here for Other Trip Reports




Part 1 - The lead up to the UA 4 Mile, to getting ticket numbers to day of flight

Who said Frequent Flyer mile tickets can’t be free?
I assume many of you have booked UA or other Star Alliance F/J ticket due to United Airlines IT generosity and only charging 4 miles for any ticket to/from or through HKG/PEK/PVG.
Otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this trip report
Let’s look back to the timeline, as least from my prespective, note these above times are HKG based.

Monday 0:55am HKG, Sunday 12:55pm EDT
Just about to go to bed, gets a PM from a fellow FTer, and it literally can be sold perceivably as the “Best Promo” of the century, 4 miles per ticket with no seat restrictions. This deal in my opinion makes the Rangoon Myanmar Kyat deal look like we just suffer a 400% inflation rate in a month.

Read around some more, rats, I don’t have UA account, tries frantically regardless.
Even woke up my parents who were dead asleep at the moment at 1:30am, thankfully they know the rules of the game, find any remote date and starts looking.
Defeated without a UA account, calls up a friend to remind him of what’s happening.
The best thing to describe my word?
“Dude, where are you, DEAL OF A LIFETIME, 4 UA MILES FOR UA F TO HKG. PEARL HARBOR, PEARL HARBOR, THIS IS NO DRILL!!!!”

In some of these cases, even if you can’t benefit, you try to help your friend look for inventory or other suggestion. I have to thank my friend for giving me this ticket by the way. Without his effort, I will not be here today as one of the Guinea Pigs to tell everyone what happened.
Friends gets 4 tickets which are fantastic as he can come more to HKG and Asia to visit me.
Confers with friend, my own ticket was booked around 2:10am.
I pester him to finish his booking, sometime I have a sense where things are dying, and unfortunately this friend was hitting the short end of the travel gods the past few weeks.
Well, all deals have to die sometime, this one died around 2:35-3am, pretty much every single blogger you can think off was reporting this deal or snafu, or mistake.
No wonder United caught what happened.
Similar to the recent “SQ Flood-Gate” incident where they open their own F/J availability to other * programs, United decided to pull the same move.
Instead of Singapore Airlines not being in the United dictionary, this time HKG doesn’t exist in the United Airlines dictionary.

First reports comes back a person on dansdeal got on a flight on LH F YVR-FRA by 5:25am, now I’m impressed how someone can take off literally in 4 hours.

As United debates their actions, the popcorn starts popping and later overflowing
Literally all day Monday, this excitement and the best reality show on earth begins to unravel.
People were starting to plan New Year Eve DOs in HKG, to maybe exclusive F flights for FTers. Hell I even saw 2 days just around that period where the seat map was already 10/12 or completely full. My suggestion to UAers is that the HKG CX group does hold a NYE DO for the last 2 years, for details, ask on the CX board.

I really do like this comment so much that I have to quote it from “escapefromPHL”
“Given that F tickets to Asia sell for about the same amount as a small sedan, it just isn't logical that this can or will be honored. It's like walking off the lot with a free Hyundai”
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/18939476-post392.html
Thankfully, I am not one of those that drives a Hyundai

I will say here, I am a pro-for ticketing obviously; otherwise I wouldn’t be flying or writing this TR right now.
We were all told at one point to “Suck Up and deal with it”
United obviously had a “programming error” as UA spokeperson Rahsaan Johnson put it on USA today.
No doubt about that!!!

In the meanwhile in the calm before the storm, some people who had the miles for the regular published amount of miles report getting were regular amount deducted. Others reported more flying during this time

[9pm HKG, 9am EDT Mon] – Someone reported United is very unhappy about this. NO SH!T, borrowing from “escapefromPHL”, you sold a Ferrari for a price of a Daewoo, what manager wants to deal with that crap and the possible fallout

[9am Tues HKG, 9pm EDT Mon] – Shannon, or more likely a UA Lawyer authorized a statement to be release to Flyertalk stating United will not honor the mistake and whomever booked will have the choice of going ahead by taking the trip but by paying the higher amount of miles or putting their miles back into account without having to pay a penalty fee.

[12am Wed HKG, 12pm EDT Tues] United Airlines website drops off the nets for 90 Minutes during a mid business-day. Others scrambled to see if their mile balance, status or tickets have been disturbed. United reports system error and nothing has changed.

[5am Wed HKG, 5pm Tues EDT], the UA 4 miles ticket info was released to USA today, and subsequently, other media such as Fodor and ABC release similar info during the day

[10am Wed HKG, 10pm Tue EDT] Bill Mosley, a spokesman for the Transportation Department, reveals to USA Today, says the department is looking into several complaints it received about the frequent-flier tickets. Such new rule he states would apply to frequent-flier tickets, "particularly when they also entail cash payments”, mine was slightly more safer due to the 21 day close-in fee as UA had to accept additional cash payments

[5am Thurs HKG, 5pm Wed EDT] I’m still awake 7 hrs before flight lying on my bed, Associated Press and most other media grab this story.

Unable to close my eyes, what’s going to happen today…



Next Part
Part 2 – The Big Day, testing out the foggy Environment