I live in MFR and that is clearly not one of their major departure cities for this promotion (or any other promotion that I've ever heard of). However, for a 50 cent ticket to Rome, I could afford to drive to LAX or even hop a cheap flight to PHX.

keith

Funny you should mention Rome ... seems to be the first offering :D

Click thru the destinations for the countdown clock -- be front & center at high-noon on Wednesday!!
/.

Up North, WestJet did this as a promotion to show to consumers how ridiculous the taxing is for flights.

Calgary to Edmonton for $1 each way!
Airfare = $2
NAVCan, GST, AIF, CATSA, among other taxes = $148.

Did anyone manage to get a flight to Rome? Their site is absolutely locked up for me.

Tsk. This is a classic problem for these sorts of promotions -- the web site gets overloaded.

What a lame-... error message.

Lazy programmers! :mad:

Lame.

Kind of what I figured.

Not that I'm too bummed about it...in the end, it's just a sorta-cheap ticket to Rome, not a free ticket to Rome.

When you say, "...it's just a sorta-cheap ticket to Rome, not a free ticket to Rome," are you alluding to the 50 cent fare or to taxes/fees over and above the $.50? When I look at Europe for purposes of quick, cheap MRs, the fares themselves may do (e.g., IAD-LHR), but those taxes/fee can add so substantially that those itineraries lose interest as potential MRs.

(BTW, if you should land a 50 cent US ticket to Rome and it is transferrable, I will give you $1 for it, so you will have a 100% ROI, which is pretty spectacular. :D )

I tried, but I received the following errors:

At 12:04 pm EST - Parse error: parse error, unexpected '&' in /var/www/50centflights.com/includes/db/database.mysql.inc on line 12

At 12:05 pm EST - Warning: mysql_connect() [function:mysql-connect]: Too many connections in /var/www/50centflights.com/includes/db/database.mysql.inc on line 12
Too many connections

At 12:34 pm EST - The page cannot be displayed

At 12:42 pm EST - Sorry!
This destination is no longer available.

I took screenshots that'll come handy in case there is a class action lawsuit against these guys in the future.

Two things work against me: (1) Kansas City isn't on the list of starting points for the free flights. So I gotta buy a ticket to get to my starting point, and since several of them are US or HP fortress hubs, those tickets aren't cheap. (2) I don't know anyone currently living in Rome, so realistically, I'm buying a 2nd (published-fare) ticket to go along with the freebie.

I look at it like this: if I want to go to Rome, it's about $1200 all-in for two of us. $600 per ticket, no really great promos to Rome right now. If I win the contest, I get to Rome for $600 + $200 + $100 = $900. If I'm lucky and can find both a $200 all-in ticket to the hub and can buy a $600 paid MCI-hub-Rome fare on the same flight at the 50-center. Considering that I am theoretically supposed to pay income taxes on the flight value (since it's a sweepstakes win) and I don't earn miles on the 50-center, it might be better, more convenient, and cheaper for me to just book 2 tickets to Rome on AA right now!

(Note: the language in Marden Kane's rules about a $500 "value" on the prize seems to indicate that they won't actually 1099 you. $600 is the level at which they are required to do that, IIRC. But by not reporting the win as income, you are theoretically evading income taxes. And no, just like the "white envelope" doesn't hold up legally, neither will "I paid fifty cents" hold up legally.)

Obviously Rome is a worst case scenario. There are a whole bunch of domestic-U.S. cities where I'd grab my running shoes and a duffel bag and hop on a plane by myself for a 1-2 day visit if the cost was only $25. But there's still that whole issue of getting to a US/HP hub to start the trip.

Are you serious?

Good analysis, but it neglected something...my generous offer. If you went after these 50 cent tickets and were to succeed, I would take it off your hands (are these transferable?) for $1 and take any responsibility for taxes. Thus, you would be spared the cost of getting to one of their hub cities and the ground costs in Italia. So you would come out ahead. (BTW, is there no de minimis prize amount for tax purposes, e.g., <$600?)

Thanks for that analysis -- I asked that very question on the USAirways message board thread and got no response. Obviously, if "winning" these tickets was a taxable event triggering a 1099, many of us would not want to win -- as that "free" trip could get quite costly depending on how high they valued the ticket. I do recall reading in the WSJ last year of a guy who had to turn down some "anywhere in the world" tickets won in an AA promotion because AA valued the tickets so high that he would have been better off just buying a cheap promo fare.

I think I recall that WSJ item too. Was his promo win, and are these US 50 cent tickets, transferable, so it might be given to someone else or a charity without tax liability for the initial recipient? It would not be much fun to "win" something that brought with it tax liability equal to, or maybe even greater, than what one would willingly pay for it. (Federal and state marginal rate up to 50% on a "rack rate" ticket at 200% what one might purchase the seat for, would be at best yield a big 0. Doubt it would be quite that bad, but it might not be so good either.)

Yeah, a class action lawsuit for not giving us the ultra cheap seats :rolleyes:, And what time is it Hawaii time at 0000EST?