I had 75,000 AA miles that I was able to book my freind to fly to africa. This was last month and on the way home it connected thru LHR, where she was able to stay in the trip at no extra cost. The taxes on this entire trip were about $100.

In return for booking this for her, she gave me points that will effectively enable my wife and 2 children and I to enjoy 6 days in Aruba at a hotel we could otherwise have not afforded.

All of this cost only some time and administration on both our parts, but really not much. Plus we enjoy the game!

This is where miles work.

Her plane tickets would have cost A LOT of money--ie, around $2,000 RT because of the destinations and time of year for travel.

On the other hand, when I am trying to grab some extra miles from doing partner transactions such as the WorldPerks mall and the miles fail to post, or some ticket needs to be booked before a certain date and I need to pay extra miles and money because the account was short, this gets a bit frustrating. Or, when United makes you be in the airport just to REDEEM a ticket for someone else if you try to book an award for them using a partner airline... Such policy cruches and glitches make it harder. In the end, though, I have won much more than I have lost.

The key to mile-ing is: It is a bit of a hobby and a challenge, and it is done because you like to travel and try to save money.

As said earlier, if those things are outweighed by one's inability to tolerate the game, it's not for you.

:)MM

The original poster seems more upset that he was being treated differently because he was on an award ticket. Frankly, if his award ticket included the connecting flight, there is no reason he should have been denied the re-routing when seats were available and others in the same situation (on paid tickets) were re-routed. Interesting that this was on DL as I've noticed a number of posts on the DL forum that relate similar failures by DL to re-book ticketed award flights following schedule changes, flight delays, or cancellations. I was always under the impression that once booked, airlines treated award tickets like any other ticket when things occurred that are outside the traveler's control. It's disconcerting that DL appears to be moving away from that. Requiring award seats to be available to re-route someone on an award ticket when there are delays/cancellations seems ridiculous and could easily lead one to be stranded.

MileKing, is this even legal? I'm worried because I've used WorldPerks recently to book a large number of award tickets, many of them all or part on Delta metal. I understand that the airline isn't responsible for weather/ATC delays and can't buy my hotel or lunch. However, I do expect the airline to get me where I'm going as the planes/seats become available. If you can just refuse to rebook someone's award travel, yes, you are not just stranding them, you can in effect steal from them. This can't be correct, is it?

I did not mean to imply that there is a DL rule or policy that states award seats need to be available to re-route someone traveling on an award ticket when there is a flight delay or cancellation. I know of no such policy and only meant to point out that these situations, in my view, seem to be coming up more and more frequently in the DL forum. People have also reported that they are meeting with increased resistance from DL to put people on flights with no award seats when prior to departure there are significant schedule changes to an award booking.

"Is this even legal?"
 

I'm not sure if the DOT has a regulation reguarding the draconian changes to FF programs. There certainly is a transportation contract between the FF Pax and the airline should not depend on if that person paid any money for that contract or not. Usually, there has to be some value for FF miles. Assuming the traditional "coupon from the newspaper" rate of 1/20 of a cent, a sum total of 2000 miles is equal to 1 USD so any DOT regulation should apply across the board, FF pax or not.

My 2 cents on the subject. FF miles are becoming more worthless every day. Most go unredeemed (78% is the consensus number) and the rampant inflation of mile reward levels ensures that fewer of them are redeemed for flights. I have given up on milage redemption and just decided to use hotel points instead to save money when traveling. I got some nice hotel redemption deals when I was in Europe 3 years ago and they are even better now that USD is pegged where it belongs given our national debt. USD will depreciate even more now that Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac have the keys to the treasury and allowed unlimited debt loads. Hotel points do have their own inflation but longer trips will necessitate more money to be spent on hotels than the flight there. Also, some hotel chains discount longer stay redemptions (or at least they did the last time I redeemed points). Airlines do not.

I am concerned about this Delta thing mentioned above.

It is as if the new flight that the OP would be put on was not one that had any award seats left on it so some idiot decided to use that as a way to conform to policy in a case where what had happened should have obviously overridden any such rules. ie, if you try to book an award ticket on a plane that has no more awards available, you cannot get that flight so you must pick another. If the flight you are on gets in trouble and they try to put you on one of those non-award seat flights, that should STILL not be your problem.

I am scared that somehow some way this snafu--if it did in fact happen the way I am guessing--will continue. (I have no idea what happened of course)
This is precisely why there needs to be a passenger bill of rights. And it needs to cover such minutia.

I can concur on what has been said about Delta in the above posts. I had two very similar situations, one involving Delta and the other AA. Both situations required a supervisor. I could see that the Delta employee was keyed towards not resolving the issue as it was an award ticket. The AA person felt that the situation was not good and took care of the problem even though it was also an award ticket. The words "award ticket" did not come into the conversation with the AA employee. The words "award ticket" were noted at least 12 times in the Delta conversation. I have a small amount of miles in my Delata account....I am done with Delta unless they are the only way out!!

what words or things should we ask delta to prepare ourselves for when booking awards with them going forward?

what were the conditions of your situation? was it a matter of them not wanting to give you a seat because you were a lowly award, or because awards somehow get lower priority in the minds of those at the gates, or because plane 2 was slated with no seats available for your type of--or any type of awards, and so they merely couldnt figure out how to key it in to make a stuck person fit in that otherwise never would have been there standing before them to pose such a problem?

I was thinking, for example...

"hey delta, i just booked this itin with 25k miles that connects thru slc. let's say it gets delayed and I need to take another DL plane out to make my other DL connection. Does this award prevent that?"

if they say "no, that wont be a problem," I will get a name and employee ID to have with me in the airport.

Is this a DL specific thing? I certainly have not suffered from a, "You're on an award ticket so no help for you!!" attitude at UA (and they aren't exactly considered benevolent masters either).

That said, it's sad that the airlines don't treat award pax with extra care as the award pax is the one being rewarded for his loyalty to the carrier and should be recognized as such.

ya, 'cept their attitude (all us carriers) has always been,

"Hey! We gave you something for FREE! Why would you EVER complain about any of it!?!?!?! GEESH!, Some people!"

On further consideration I think that a "mileage is b.s" attitude seems just an unsophisticated take on what is really just a game in which the rules are changing. While most of us might bemoan the fact, we're not ready to quit the game; we'll just learn today's rules and work with them.

Standard thinking is miles are worth 1 or 2 cents each. Your redemption is 9.09 cents per mile. I just burned up miles for the exchange rate of 10.3 cents per mile. Anyone here remember what the maximum rate per mile anyone has mentioned getting for their "b.s." miles?

not leaving the game
 

when the rules to a game change the better players adapt and overtake the ones that are unable or unwilling

I miss $99 RT's from AUS-DAL (ez miles) but AA pulled the route. It's going to cost $50 more to upgrade TATL/TPAC with miles. Cost effective mileage runs are getting harder to come by. I'm not leaving this game, but rather intend to figure out how to continue scoring and even improve the payback.

I like having elite status and hope to exchange the miles for something I'd never pay out of pocket: travel from US to AU in biz/1st. Both will require some gamesmanship and adaptation as the rules change. It's worth it to me.

I get 1% cash back on my primary card (I have a Starwood as a second one). I have no idea what the interest rate is -- if you pay your balance in full each month, you never get charged interest. Paying credit card interest rates is never a good fiscal decision.

As another poster said, the norm is far lower than this. The only case where the costs might fall in this range would be a small vendor accepting Amex (which has the highest transaction costs).

I recall a couple of years ago when I paid for two cheap "B" tickets on US and upgraded them with miles. Of course, we also earned miles for the flight. At the time, using published fare numbers, I figured I was getting about 13 cents/mile value.

Total BS.

Uh-huh.