BillShepp

So I took my mileage run last weekend. Ended up not working out exactly as I
planned:

As you may recall, I was scheduled to fly from SFO-ORD on the redeye, then on
to CMH and return. I got a page the night of my red-eye informing me my
ORD-CMH flight had been cancelled due to poor weather in Chicago. I was still
at home, so I called the PremEx 800# to make new arrangements. I asked if I
could simply turn around in ORD, skipping the CMH part (without giving
explanation as to why I was even flying at all). She said "Oh no, we'd have to
refare the entire trip if you do that". She rebooked me on later flights,
which now extended my return from 2:51PM to 6PM, not the end of the world, but
my wife was now insisting I would be stuck at ORD for days! I assured her I'd
have better luck with the agents in Chicago once I was actually there.

So I flew the redeye uneventfully, arriving at O'hare roughly on time at
5:30AM. Due to 50% of all UA flight having been cancelled, there was already
an _enormous_ queue (snaking down the terminal) at the Customer Service desk
being served by only one agent. I happily made use of my Red Carpet
membership to find a line of three people being served by four agents! I told
the agent that due to the cancelled flight I'd no longer be able to make my
meeting in CMH, and could she just get me back to SFO on the next available
flight? She was very accomadating, marvelled at my $127 fare, and booked me
on the next flight, which was due to have left at 6AM but delayed until 7:30AM
due to crew delay. That flight was full (due to many other cancelled flights
to SFO and SJC), and an A320 rather than widebody, but was fairly uneventful,
and got me home just before 10AM. The agent also gave me a claim form for
miles from ORD <-> CMH, but said I might not receive the miles since the
cancellation was due to weather.

At any rate, the net is that I will still make my 1K qualification, earned
3600 status miles (and 10800 total miles), with the possibility of another
3000 miles, for $127 (plus $25 short-term parking at SFO) and 11 hours.

dhammer53

Bill,

Sounds as if almost everything worked out fine.

As many people here would tell you, just keep calling United until someone promises to adjust your miles.

I'm going to cruise into Premier Exec (the hard way) on Xmas day. Now about that 'private' Premier Exec phone #.

Dan

motnot

Not to be annoying, but it would be nice if all trip reports were in the Trip Reports forum.

pshuang

Given that the description of this forum is precisely "Discussion of trip itineraries designed solely for gaining maximum miles and/or points for no other reason that to gain the miles and/or points", I disagree with you. BillShepp largely focused on issues which are particularly relevant to mileage runs --- total elapsed time, possibility of getting miles without actually flying a couple of the segments, benefits acquired on this run, cost-value analysis, etc. These are all things of curious interest to me, which is why I'm currently reading this forum. The FlyerTalk Trip Reports forum, on the other hand, seems to have postings which go into many other details that I'm not interested in. I know that there are those who are interested in those kinds of details, but for the most part, I'm not. Conversely, I imagine that there are many readers of that forum who would not be interested in the kind of details BillShepp put into his posting.

anthonyanthony

Maybe the best thing to do to make the topic police happy would be to post the message on Trip Report, with a second message here in Mileage Run saying something like "I'm back from my mileage run and have posted a report here: <insert link here>".

Personally, I think that posting a mileage run trip report here is more likely to find its intended target audience than if it was posted on the generic general catch-all trip report board. But that's just me.

l etoile

My SFO-CMH didn't go quite as planned either. It became SFO-IAD, so I actually got more miles and was left with some tickets to put in for refunds on.

I dragged my 11-year-old son along and he wrote the report. It's Twas the Flight Before Christmas on the Trip Reports board.

BillShepp

How did you end up being routed through IAD? I would have loved that - a longer redeye, plus more miles! How do you have tickets to be refunded on? Wasn't SFO - CMH a single itinerary? I don't see how you could get a refund on a part of an intinerary...

l etoile

Bill: My original routing was SFO-DEN-CMH and then CMH-ORD-SFO. SFO-DEN was canceled and the agent at the premier desk was extremely helpful, especially when I told her I didn't care where I was routed through (though I wanted to avoid ORD) because it was simply a miles run. She asked me for suggestions (I said through Hawaii would be nice ) and a routing through IAD was what she eventually produced.

At IAD I found out IAD-CMH was canceled. They would have put me up for the night, but it wasn't likely I'd get out in the morning in time to make my return flight. So I went to the gate for the flight to SFO, which was leaving in 20 minutes, and asked if I could get on. The agent thought I was crazy, but got me on and handed me back tickets for one of my canceled segments and told me I was due a refund. I didn't argue. I just put in for it ... I'm curious to see if they actually issue it.

As for issuing refunds on segments of a trip, I know they do this and there's some mysterious, complex formula for figuring out what a single segment is worth. At this fare, my remaining ticket's probably worth about $5.


[This message has been edited by letiole (edited 12-19-2000).]