It's been exactly two weeks since I called, and have yet to receive a return phone call... no big surprise there... =)

Caught a flight from PHX-IND yesterday so I decided to try my luck at the ticket counter in PHX. Spent nearly two hours at the counter, rep apparently didn't know anything about certs - thought it was $99 off instead of $99 base fare. It took an hour to get the first set of tickets, and the price was $619 each. He said not to worry, the discount would be in there... I didn't trust it.

Long story short, he never got the tickets issued properly, it took two other supervisors and a twenty minute phone call, but the floor sup *promised* it would be resolved when I got to Indy and that they'd hold the tickets until July 30. I'll find out for sure on Tuesday when I return. Total price should be ~$850-900. I nearly missed my flight after all of the fun at ticketing - they had already closed the door... =)

Funny thing about all this is, I could book the flights on AA right now for $330 each w/ tax. So I'm not saving anything by going with HP/US except for the DM miles (and at 5000 RT, it's not really worth the hassle).

Thanks for all of your thoughts and suggestions - the wikipedia article was indeed interesting - i was going to print it out and take it with me but was concerned that they would get confused on the difference between "contiguous" and "continental". After a little more research, UA says continental includes AK, so does AA (for FF).

I'll update on Tuesday when I (hopefully) get the tickets confirmed and in-hand... =)