Imcgrat2

I should have taken the opportunity to cash in my travel funds for points but I missed it. Now I have $700 in travel funds that expire at the end of the year but I am my wife's companion on her companion pass, and I am only travelling with her this year. Is there any way for me to book our tickets using the travel funds in my name and still take advantage of the companion pass?

TIA

Tanic

Won't work. Do you have any tainted TFs to force them to expire sooner? You could then convert to a LUV voucher at a cost of $100 and book in wife's name.

HPN-HRL

Not possible to use your travel funds to book a ticket for your wife.

Best option (assuming it still exists when you can use it) is to wait until your TFs expire, then soon after call Customer Service and ask to reinstate your TFs for a $100 fee (taken out of your TFs). The fee is $100 per PNR, so if your TFs have multiple PNRs then consolidate them by booking a ticket with 2 or 3 of the TFs at a time until all of your TFs are under 1 PNR. (You can use no more than 3 payment methods on any ticket.) Note that the returned funds go onto a LUV Voucher, which can be spent by anyone; but these expire 6 months after the original expiration IIRC.

Example: if you have $150 under PNR AAAAAA expiring in October, $240 under PNR BBBBBB expiring in November, $180 under CCCCCC expiring in early December, and $130 under PNR DDDDDD expiring in late December, do something like this:

1) Find a ticket in the $420-550 range - I will use $430 in this example - and buy it using CCCCCC ($180), BBBBBB ($240), and $10 of DDDDDD to make up the balance. This will generally be under a new PNR (call it EEEEEE). Then cancel this ticket, leaving you with $430 in EEEEEE expiring in November (which is the earliest date of the funds used in this step), $120 still in DDDDDD expiring in early December, and AAAAAA as above.

2) a) If you can find a ticket exactly equal to (or slightly below if you are willing to lose the difference) the total of your funds ($700 in this example) and buy it using AAAAAA, DDDDDD, and EEEEEE, do so. Then cancel this ticket and all of your funds will be under a single PNR (ZZZZZZ?).
b) If you cannot find a ticket exactly equal to your fund total - in this example assume the lowest ticket price that you can find which is above your $700 in TFs is a $725 ticket - then you will first have to find a ticket above $580 and buy it using EEEEEE ($430), AAAAAA ($150), and some of DDDDDD; once this is ticketed and then cancelled all of this money will be in a single voucher (call it FFFFFF). Now you can book the $725 ticket using the three forms of payment FFFFFF, (the rest of) DDDDDD, and an additional $25 from a CC or gift card. Once you cancel this new ticket you will have $725 in TFs under a single PNR.

Sorry for the length of this example - as you can see this can be quite involved when you have several TTFs.

Good luck!

m907

Thanks for the walkthrough.

I'll take this opportunity to get on my soapbox and say that no airline which took federal taxpayer money last year should be able to expire travel funds.

ftnoob

Out of curiousity...a) when did you book the flight that resulted in you having TTF?; b) When did your wife earn CP?