I have two questions pertaining to purchasing AA tickets.

1) As a means of liquidating some Visa GC's that I plan to buy, I'd like to use them to buy flights. An AAgent told me that you can use multiple forms of payment at the airport, but not online or over the phone. How does this comport with what people know? Do they have to be physical cards or will eCards do?
2) I got a voucher for denied boarding. The document says it can be redeemed by phone or aa.com. Someone in the boarding area said they were transferrable but only if the owner and transferree signed them together in person. How does that work? It's possible that my voucher is different than theirs because mine was voluntary and theirs wasn't.

When you say gift cards, do you mean AA gift cards or something like a virtual visa gift card? Because the latter can generally only be used online or over the phone in "card not present" transactions. I'm not sure if their POS system will allow them to key in a card number.

I edited the original post to be clearer.

I do not like your chances of being able to pay with one of those in person. It would require the PoS system to allow it and the agent to know how to do it and be willing to do it.

It looks EXTREMELY suspicious to want to pay with a card without having the card there. I completely understand what you are trying to do and why you are trying to do it but that's not how it's going to look to others.

OK well it's not that big a deal to get physical cards, I think it's $1 more per card.

I haven't bought a ticket at a ticket counter in forever; do I just go to the same counter I'd check luggage at and say "I want to buy a ticket?" Will they waive the ticketing fee for EXP's?

What about the other question, about transferring denied boarding vouchers? Anyone know?

I’ll just add, this should be your last resort for liquidating gift cards. In the event that you have to cancel that flight for a refund, it’s going to go back to a bunch of different prepaid cards that you may not even still have the numbers to. It’s workable, but it sucks. I’d spend it on something consumable like restaurants first.

Also keep in mind there are additional fees for ticketing at the airport vs online. It was $30 many years ago.

if you’re not in a hurry, I would just buy aa.com gift cards with your prepaids, then use those. I believe you can use up to nine of them on a single reservation. Unlike credit cards. AA knows not to process refunds back to them.

Not to mention that paying for a flight with a good travel CC gives you some form of trip delay / cancellation / interruption insurance and a huge rebate in the form of points. So, it's a lot to give up.

That might not be compatible with the OP�s goal of manufactured spending.

How is buying airline tickets with gift cards or prepaid debit cards manufactured spending? It all seems to be real spend.

Yes and no. The idea is to make a purchase that gets LP's on the AA shopping site. So I use a credit card that gets me points to buy the GC's, then use the GC's to buy plane tickets, perhaps with a trip to AA gift cards in the middle. I will probably give up a few points by not using my Amex plat card, but I will get 2-3x miles and LP's for the GC purchases.

My objective is to buy GC's and not use them for daily spend so that I end up with a dozen cards with small balances on them. RIght now I am on Obamacare with a monthly premium of exactly $1500 a month, and I can pay that with prepaid cards. So that's a convenient way to liquidate $1500 in GC's a month. But I am only on Obamacare through September. After that I would like to find largeish purchases that I can use multiple forms of payment for.

The idea of using them to buy AA gift cards is a very good one, if I can use multiple AA gift cards to buy tickets.

Frankly it's WAY more work than I'd like to undertake, especially after doing 7 figures a year in GC's-to-money orders for several years. But this may be my only way to pad my LP's to keep status.

I understand what you are doing. This is not manufactured spending. It's real spend (airfare) that you are transferring to a different form of payment. (The GC to MO thing is clearly manufactured spending)

The multiple cards with small amounts is not a problem I've had. I have enough bills that accept multiple forms of payment that I can always completely use up any card with a small balance. I only ever have one partially used at a time.

I shop often at Walmart, and their POS system is fairly easy to use for partial cards. I'm not positive, but I think they can use the Meta cards for MO's for a swipe up to $99, and so if I had low-balance cards I could possibly swipe 4 of them to get a MO. (I'm not sure because I haven't bought MO's in quite a while.)

I'd still prefer though to not have to cycle prepaid cards through my wallet if possible. Aside from my health insurance premiums, my largest annual spend category is airfare.

None of this is directly relevant until the fall when I end Obamacare and go on Medicare; I'm just trying to get ahead of the curve.

If you won't be collecting Social Security when you enroll in Medicare, you will be able to pay your monthly Medicare premiums with a credit or debit card. Not sure if a prepaid debit/gift card would also work.

And if you ever need to meet a minimum-spend requirement to earn a sign-up bonus on a new credit card, you can pre-pay several months' worth of Medicare premiums in a single payment.

Yes, but this is still only $170 per month, vs. $1500 on Obamacare now. My cable bill is about the same amount ($170). I'm looking for the ability to churn about $2K a month in GC's. Right now I'm also working off a $10K/3 months minimum spend for an Amex SUB. So $6K in GC's helps that a lot.

OK. I'm assuming that you are not subject to the IRMAA premium adjustment, which could result in a significantly higher Medicare premium -- but still not $1,500/month.