Originally Posted by
Punki
Interesting. We just had
a similar discussion in the UA forum.
I am in the camp that firmly believes that passengers should get the actual number of miles and segments that they fly.
I agree. Except I'd state it more precisely: any itinerary with more than one flight, even if it's one flight number, should receive the total of the published segment's distances.
Other people who posted in the thread thought that we should be happy with the imaginary number of miles that we would have flown had a direct flight existed.
Actually no one was saying that at all.
That is stretching things a little too far for my imagination so I called UA and asked for the real mileage and they were happy to accomodate.
The difference in mileage for a flight SEA/IAD/FRA (actual flight) and SEA/FRA (imaginary flight) is over 1,200 miles, so it was worth the effort.
Fortuitious for the poster that she managed to get someone to break the rules for her. That is a significant number of miles. If she's flown SNA-LAX or similar ~30-ish mile flights, I assume that she also asked United,
on the very same principle and logic, to deduct the appropriate number of miles from her account since she would have received 400+ "imaginary" miles for such flights. ^