Originally Posted by
indufan
Here is the thing about that. They have to have another way if this comes up. For years, I paid for tickets with a card I didn't physically have. Dozens and dozens of times I have given my SkyMiles to other people with me not traveling always paying the taxes and fees myself. Number of times they have been asked to show the card....zero. If they had been, they are going to say they don't have it. Maybe Delta calls me. Maybe they ask some other questions. This is not an unusual situation. It has to come up.
The two regions that seem to generate that kind of fraud concern are western Africa (Nigeria and Ghana airports are big red flags in the system) and, for some reason, the US Virgin Island airports. The usual workaround is to purchase through a third party online travel agency like Expedia.
My parents like to pay for the tickets when we go up to visit and I've never had an issue. Even have Mom's Delta credit card number saved into my own Skymiles account. If there ever was a question, it would be pretty easy to verify that, yes, I make regular trips to the city identified as her hometown in her Skymiles account using that card and and even have her listed as my emergency contact person in my Skymiles account. So enough connection points that the odds that there is ticket fraud with that purchase are close to zero.