Ehem, many things have a round about way of getting something from us... I too noticed the "earn 500 miles on United" link when I checked deaper into some of the things listed online at the OP's university!

I am so TOTALLY kidding - besides, everyone knows that if it's a third party partner for United miles, you'd probably never get them in your account anyway.



(ok resume normal posting please - sorry )

Anyway, concerning fraud, I think one of the interesting "benefits" of the post-9/11 ear for the airlines is that they were able to invent, insert, enforce and charge for all kinds of new changes that made it harder for scammers to get away with many of the things from the recent past. Not that 99% of us would have really gone out of our way to do these anyway, but here are some things you USED to be able to do with greater ease than now:

-selling of awards/miles/vouchers

-flying as someone else (heck I did it, that was college!)

-changing plans at the last minute and just rebooking

-booking several awards and then canceling them to take the flight you wanted.

-having many award seats available that worked the same as cash did

-PAYING with cash!

-and so on...

Maybe the disertation will have some of the comparisons and newly installed stoppers to things from yesteryear VS. today.

carry on!
MM