Award Ticket/paying tax in cash
 

I want to give an award ticket to an acquaintance. I already have the reservation for her, I just have to have the ticket issued and pay the tax. Can I have the ticket issued at the airport and pay the tax($60) in cash? If I pay the tax in cash will this cause trouble for my acquaintance since it was a cash transaction and not a credit card?

No problems with this at all.

Why would it cause a problem for you to pay cash for a gift rather than using a credit card?

It might raise the cost to $75, with the $15 airport ticketing fee.

This happened to me. I wanted to give someone a physical ticket as a gift, it did cost me an extra 15$ YMMV.

While it certainly is possible to pay taxes and airport service fees on an award tickets with cash, I personally do not recommend it unless you are interested in SSSSome quality time with TSA.

Best to use a credit card with the same billing address as your AAdvantage account.

It's OT but for what purpose they print this SSSS on your bp ?

Had it once and never got the reason for it... :confused:

Depends for what purpose the op wants to pay the tax in cash, he can also use a prepaid CC.

Well, I am after all a FlyerTalk member, so here's my POV: $60 paid using my Citibank AA Business card = 120 miles. If I never hear from my acquaintance again, I still got something out of it. ;)

Wow, I'm really surprised that you are PLT and don't know what SSSS means. Try a search in this forum (or the Travel Safety and Security forum).

The short version: It means that you were pre-selected (or randomly chosen) to receive "Orange" TSA treatment, meaning a full secondary inspection. It often happens if you buy one-way tickets, or use cash....basically anything remotely suspicious. If you are elite, you can ask the TA to remove it and reprint your BP, but sometimes they will give you a funny look and say forget about it.

Basically, it's always best to leave as much of an electronic trail as possible...with all of the names and billing addresses being the same. That way, you are least likely to get SSSSed.

I've paid cash for tickets before and it certainly didn't cause me to be selected for additional screening. Most often buying airlines at the last minute caused it for me...until I started flying AA and became PLT.

I'm not necessarily disputing the above poster but I wouldn't take one person's random post as fact. Do some more searching if this is important to you.

I have gone to the airport and ticketed there just to get their "receipt" printed on AA ticket stock. A gift that looks like a ticket seems to make a better gift than a printed paper off the computer.

I sure hope the TSA dont read this forum.

If paying by cash is a cause of getting SSSS on your BP, this is another stupid issue that has NOTHING to do with security. After all, anyone can use a credit, debit, or gift card to buy a ticket. To get an AA gift card, you can just go into a Safeway store and pay cash....... :)

Maybe I am wrong. I think you are coming on too strong on skywalkerLAX. The way understand him is that he's not sure why he got SSSSed once, instead of what is SSSS.

I would think elite status has nothing to do with knowing what SSSS means or not. If you need to fly in the US now, you better know about SSSS.;)