I have a relative who works for a large, well known corporation. He told me that any flight over 6 hours long (basically outside USA) the company will pay for business class. May be for management(?) of the company. If the employee uses their FF program (ie systemwides or miles) to upgrade, the company will give the employee about $2000 for doing that. The company saves alot of money and passes some of the savings to the employee. I believe that the employee pays taxes on the $2000.

Arya,

I doubt you will ever get BA gold if you trade your J for an eco seat, reaching gold or maybe even earning a comp will need a lot of premium class flying. If you always trade your first and keep the cash how did you reach CO Plat/UA 1K?

As for comping, if you are euro based you can probably forget it, I only know of US members that get a comp. Another friendly little tip: stop presing the enter key in the middle of line, it's pretty annoying reading.

Co plat : comped to gold and earned
pattinum. 104,000 base 350,000 award
miles. Thank for all the bonus promotions. Ua 1k : got comped to prem ex , then did baht run for 1k.

Next I will get comped to aa plat
and earn exec plat by not ever flying american. For the record I sometimes do buy full fare coach to get upgraded to biz. class. What special perks does ba gold have, do you get a free award ticket like ac super elite at a crtain threshold. Free upgrades or antyhing ?

Tried to play the comp game with continental, no luck , was only Silver with Delta, Continental wouldn't match it to keep me. Guess they looked at my profile and realized I was flying to IAH so ther wasn't a chance I would go through SLC or Dallas to get to Houston so why give away the extra miles.

Reached Platinum anyway, lossing my Silver on Delta, but Delta's U/G policy doesn't compare to Continentals.

The F/C seats are worth more than the free flights.



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Dave Wilson

Comping elite status is pretty much always a one-time deal. If an airline comps status, it's because they believe it will remove a barrier to using them for a lot of travel. If you don't come through, don't expect them to do it again. In other words, don't ask for it just to prove you can get it, to collect a luggage tag, or if you want to board early for a flight or two.

As for pocketing the difference: a few years back a client sent me to Nice. (Wish it happened more often!) They were willing to pay for a business class ticket. I asked them up front if they'd pay the same if I bought an economy ticket, since I'd rather have the $$ than the more comfortable seat. They said "fine," so I did. I ended up upgrading one way with miles and got a 4-across center section to sleep on the other. The extra income was, of course, taxable, since I could only deduct what I actually paid for my ticket from what I billed them for the project.

This was all open and above board. I don't believe I did anything remotely unethical or illegal. I have no reason to believe A.A. did. Unless someone else does, I suggest we ease off.

In the case of BA comping my status, they know from my UA statement that I fly paid business class, and about how many times a year I fly. My immediate work group also has quite a few BA golds so this increases the chance that they will get a reasonable amount of revenue from my business.

I live in Seattle so for European travel one airline is not much better than another. I got sick of the old 767s that SAS uses on its non-stop to Copenhagen, so that leaves only a handful of choices. BA must realize that they're likely to get most if not all of my transatlantic flights.

I'm sure that it was not a difficult business decision for them, but it can't hurt that I'm already booked to fly them twice in the next few weeks.