To make a long story short, this is what happened to me:

I bought a BOS-NRT-PVG ticket for Jan. 2005 from a consolidator (H class). Later I changed the dates to May 2005 after paying $320 fee to the travel agency (NW won't handle this).

Now I login www.nwa.com and see BOTH reservations are still there with valid ticket numbers. It even allows me to assign seats for Jan. 2005 flight, even though this reservation is not supposed to be there anymore because of ticket change.

This could be a "nice" MR that would yield 16,500 EQMs and nearly 40,000 total miles including bonus miles for free. ^ ^

Not that I intend to take this advantage, but it does look weird to me. Anyone has any insights on this?

I have a somewhat similar situation where I had booked a paper award ticket to SYD for December but re-deposited and returned the ticket and had the miles redeposited. I can even now still view the reservation on nwa.com and even select seats, though it won't do much good since I don't have the paper ticket anymore.

I'm afraid to call and let them know, I almost think it could complicate things more!.

There's a human "cleaner" that manually goes through reservations some time prior to departure. I had a cleaner call me up because my cousin was waitlisted for a flight. Another time, I had a cleaner call me because there was a full-fare "Y" reservation for a few months that hadn't been ticketed. The cleaner asked if I would like to ticket it. Apparently, the travel agency that had made the reservation on my behalf forgot to cancel it.

Something similar happened to me last month, on code-share CO and NW. I could change seats to two itineraries, the original one, and the revised one with same dates but different flights. It got messy, because I booked via Expedia, flights were originally NW and then CO, and the revised flights were both NW. I made the ticket change with CO and paid approx. $290 extra (including the change-of-ticket fee).

When I arrived to take my revised flight, a later one, the NW ticketing agent only could pull up my original flight, which had already departed. To make a long story short, it took about 30 minutes for him to clear it up with several calls to NW and CO. He even asked if I could document that I changed my ticket and paid the extra fees, all with e-tickets. Ugh. I almost missed my flight, but fortunately it was delayed by 15 minutes, just long enough for me to make it.

So, my point is, I suggest you get it all straightened out in advance, as you could have troubles. By the way, I couldn't check-in online with my revised itinerary either, which should have given me some idea that a problem was on the horizon.

Good luck.

I agree and suggest taking care of it now. My boyfriend had bought a ticket from BWI to MSY on orbitz.com and they emailed him a few days later and said that transaction didn't go through and cancelled it. So he looked for another ticket and found one cheaper on delta.com DCA to MSY and bought that.

He showed up on the day of departure at DCA with the receipts in hand. They could only find the original, more expensive ticket out of BWI. They refused for him to board at DCA, despite having open seats and made him go to BWI. Of course, since the flights were at the same time, he missed the flight and had MANY issues before making it to MSY. He of course had to pay for the more expensive ticket as well.

I don't know if one of the "cleaner" cancelled out one of his flights or exactly what happened, but....I recommend having good documentation and confirming the issue in advance.

I wouldn't rely merely on an itinerary. You need the actual e-ticket (faxed or e-mailed to you), or at the very least the e-ticket number itself -- often available on an online credit card transaction list.

I wouldn't think of travelling anywhere without having my ticket number written down in several places, and proof of payment.

I called NW and was told that BOTH reservations are CONFIRMED.

The agent even changed seat for me. Is there still trouble?

I can;'t imagine what went wrong......

Actually I can see E-ticket numbers for both reservations. And I was told both e-tickets are valid......

But that would take away at least 50% of the excitment involved in air travel!

"Human cleaner"?

It would be interesting if the EUA for the first itinerary goes through.....

I'll report back if I get an email from NW saying "We are pleased to confirm that your First Class Upgrade is made"

May be the travel agency bought another ticket for $320!