How did you lose Pan Am miles? Ours automatically became Delta miles
(4 accounts), some of which we still have.

Both of my parents got re-married within a month of each other. I got all 4 of them Delta award tickets on a 20k mile special Delta had going on at the time. Not 1 ticket was used. I thought about turning the tickets back in and getting the miles back, but they wanted $100 apiece! I guess it would have been worth it to get 80k miles for $400, but at that time, $400 was hard to come by (damn layoffs). Broke my heart to see those tickets go to waste. I sure wish I had known ahead of time they wouldn't use them.

For PA and TW miles, any harm to ask for them from DL or AA, respectively?

What I hate is lost flights!

Did the United "Go Around the World" promotion where one earned certificates for free flights for based on paid flights (e.g., 8 paid flights = 1 free flight or some such), earned a certificate but didn't remember to use it until after it expired. Darn!

(My only consolation was that the flight wouldn't have counted towards elite requalification anyway. )

Hmmm... thankfully I didn't lose my TWA miles, they went into my AA account. I lost a few hundred Starpoints and about 6000 USAir miles due to expiration, and of course a few Southwest and ATA credits since those have limited lifetimes regardless of activity, but I think that's basically about it. Everything else is still there or was redeemed. Let's hope it stays that way!

Wow, UA stinks on that one, I think! Gee, I wonder why THAT isnt considered "activity" in one's account, thereby resetting it for another 18 months or whatever it is now! I mean, especially since you PAID for the transaction to redeposit them. Did you ever inquire about this? Maybe you still can/ought to try?...

Pan Am miles could be transferred to both American and United at different points in time. Just before the end of Pan Am, World Pass miles all transferred over to Delta.

Same with me on Frontier. Dirt cheap flight from LAX to LGA (? I think, may have been JFK) last June. Get the Visa offers 2-3x/month but now that NWA and AA are both flying from HPN, there's a very slim chance I'll fly Frontier again.

Have about 13K AA miles in limbo. Will see where I am after August's HPN-ORD-LAX-MEL-ADL-BNE-LAX-ORD-HPN marathon to see value v. cost of the 13K.

I once washed some pants and found ruined miles in a pocket.

In my youth 1 to 11 years old my dad would take the family on lots of business trips with him on Northwest airlines. He had a pretty generous employer so we never cashed in on miles and well I ended up losing 300,000 miles with northwest when he switched the family to united.

Call it what you will but I had no idea that TWA miles transferred to AA and I fly AA almost exclusively so lost only about 40K combined with my wife. My address had changed during the transition and so TWA most likely could not match my AA account.

My wife who travels infrequently has lost most of her miles but they only range from 5K - 20K on virtually all airlines / hotels. The only other ones I've lost are Hilton when I neglected to stay with them for a long time but that was only about 40K Hilton points. Although I deserved to lose those Hilton points, it does make me not want to stay with Hilton, perhaps because I have to start from zero and rather just build up my other hotel points.

Personally, I do find it hard to keep track of those programs that I don't stay / fly often and where I don't have a credit card.

well i have said it many times before and in many different ways...

I know this may not be how one is supposed to view FFps, but I have always had issues with the concept of someone giving you something to use later for free, because you spent money or time there, but that this all comes with conditions (such as the "oh by the way, use it or lose it!" philosophy that comes attached in fine print with your "free" points and miles). I dunno, to me, as a business model, it just seems so... cheap!

Nevertheless, we KNOW the game, now--or most in here do--and so we give in and chose to adhere to such rules and reasoning. It must think we like it that way!

but I lost 60K Varig Smiles last year during their reorganization. Every day I tried to book award tickets, I was informed that another *partner had been dropped. And, the Tokyo office told me that if the partnership was dropped after the tickets were issued, they would be cancelled, even if I was enroute somewhere ! With no Varig service to Japan, they said they were trying to work out an extension of the expiration date with the home office ....... which was reassuring until the Tokyo office disappeared.

The home office was less than accommodating .....

My first credit card that I applied for myself (circa 1991) was a "points" earning card for ski trips, ski gear, etc.

When I signed up for it, they were offering free multi-day lift tickets, free skis, boots, bindings, poles, ski related clothing as redemption rewards.
Some of the "prices" were really very good, not like the "prices" you see today. The earning rate was 3 points per dollar spent.

I had it for about 4-5 months when I got the idea that I would ask my folks if I could pay my tuition (1 semester) with it and if they could then reimburse me (they paid for room and board and 3.0s and above, I paid for anything under that). They agreed to do it.

Tuition was around $8k, I paid it with my card.
I waited until the next monthly statement came and saw that I had a whole bunch of points.

Since it had been a few months I wanted to make sure I had the most up to date reward catalog so I called and asked if they would send me a new one. It arrived a few days later.

Upon opening the catalog I started noticing that their reward program had changed. Now instead of totally free items for X points, you could redeem X points and get 5-20% off if you spent X amount of $.

So if you bought a pair of skis for $200 you could get 10% off.
If you bought a pair for $300 you could get 15% off.


I called and talked to a rep to ask about the change and they said that they had to change their program since people were getting so much free stuff.

I guess I should have gotten into the game sooner.

I'm too new to the game (and too smart ) to have lost any miles worth mentioning in the thread.

My father lost more DL miles than I care to imagine when for two years in the mid 1990s he was flying LGW-ATL-TYS every three weeks in Business Class. He just never got round to using the miles and they expired unused

I've trotted this story out before but what the hell...The absolute worst, and one of the reasons why, even as not very regular traveller myself, I keep an eye on my FFPs is that for eight years my father was working regularly in Southern California. My brother, mother and I would fly out to see him in BA Club World anywhere from four to seven times per year. To credit miles to BA Executive Club you need to be 18yrs old but you could set up a Household account and anyone, any age could contribute. However my father never realised this so my brother and I lost equivalent to 100+ J trips worth of miles in the process. Plus some BA Gold wallet candy, not that I had a wallet at the age of 7 but....