Those of you who think this is unethical - would you feel the same way if these were paid tickets? What if he had locked in low fares instead of award reservations?

Ever make a hotel or rental car reservation now to lock in a low rate, knowing that there's a good probability that you'll end up canceling?

I don't think there is anything unethical about it. If you have the miles than you should be allowed, especially if it concerns different travel dates. As much as we'd all like to be able to set plans in stone all at one time, it often doesn't happen. Award seat availability is so variable that one often has to make a reservation when they see their desired number of seats pop up for chosen dates. Outbound and/or return dates often are not set yet so better to get them while you see availability then to wait and find out everything is gone. If you don't use them, the seats go back into the award pool for someone else. All of us know on FT, that we have to check on a daily basis for award availability anyways.

You could extend this concept to anything. The last few years for my then girlfriend / now wife, I've often bought a couple different versions of the same item (last year, 3 different car radios; year before; 4 different outside lights; etc) knowing that she'll only keep one of the items (the item SHE has chosen to be the best for her), with the others being returned. When I bought my new car a few years ago, the Toyota dealer basically let me use the model I was interested in for the day. I immediately drove it to an Acura dealer to compare it side by side. I ended up buying the Toyota, but when I initially drove away with it, there was a 50% chance I'd be returning it, having bought the Acura.

Was is unethical for me to take the loan of the Toyota (as per this thread's analogy, depriving another person the chance to use it) knowing there was a 50% chance I wouldn't keep it? Christmas time, lots of items out of stock before the holiday, followed by lots of returns afterwards. Is it unethical to buy something knowing there's a good chance you won't use it? Commerce will stop.

I'm certainly guilty when it comes to FF awards. When I booked award tickets to Key West last year (for this year), I initially selected the desired outbound, and a dummy return date. Held that for a week until my desired return date was available, but no more outbound availability. Made two reservations, then had an agent combine then, stripping the 'inner' segments so I got the desired outbound and return flights (note - agent did say that's not always guaranteed to occur). Not the way I really enjoyed doing it, but working within their FF system, it was the best for me.

I believe USAirways only lets you hold award reservations for 1 day, and United 3 days (maybe have those numbers reversed), compared to 14 days for Delta (down from 30 a few years ago). I guess the goal is to try to restrict holding seats you really won't end up using. However, I'm not sure it's made the reservation process for those airlines any easier. That 1-3 day hold time for United might be great when you are looking for availability (not much on hold), but it you are trying to book a 2 wk trip to Hawaii or Australia, it becomes a real pain in the ___. Suddenly you can't find anything because you can never align your departure dates with your return dates. So perhaps ALL of those people taking one week or more trips to these destinations have to settle for at least one undesirable flight, because they can never reserve exactly what they want.

Jeff

I wouldn't think it's unethical, but it would suck to be the other guy sitting at home thinking about how hard it is to get an award ticket these days.
And comparing it to buying radios or renting a car or even a paid ticket is not really valid. Award tickets are few and far between anyway. And while it does happen, a store running out of a radio or Alamo not having a car is rare, and really isn't that big a deal. Who has ever missed going on vacation or visiting family because they couldn't upgrade their cd player. The concept in general applies, but only after a great deal of extending. I'd say it's more like blocking traffic in a car until you decide which way to go. There are ways around, they just may not be ideal.

That comment should probably tell you it's unethical....if it would stink to be the other guy.

Comparisons to reserving cheap rooms and buying merchandise on approval are spurious. Frequent flyer awards (except on WN) are capacity controlled. There is no limit to the number of CD players in a department store. If "everyone" booked 8 possible vacations while they made a choice, the value of ALL frequent flyer programs would be devalued, as customers would decide that they were useless.

Perhaps a better analogy would be if you bought the four last ice cream cones from a vendor, let three partially melt as you decided which to eat, and then returned the three partially melted ice cream cones you didn't want. You're preventing others from buying an ice cream while you make your decision, and the quality of the product you make available after you decide is worth less than the product you took: in the case of the FF award, because most people agree that it's better to be able to make plans far in advance, cetibus paribas, and you have prevented that from happening.

This is not relevant to the situation, but do the posters who think there's no problem with double-booking awards also think that it's OK to drive 35 mph along a line of cars waiting to merge, then cut in at the last minute? You ARE, after all, driving in a "legal lane."

Is it unethical? Probably since doing this would not necessarily be beneficial to other people. But when I think about award reservations, I would say it's really about rewarding myself. True, awards, particularly the specific ones I intend to have at times are hard enough to secure, that when in fact I do find one and can actually insure/protect the reservation from schedule changes or whatever with another duplicate reservation, I would readily use this option. Ok let's say that it's unethical but it's something I will not lose sleep from. In fact, knowing that my award reservation is set and 'insured' will make me feel better.

[QUOTE=John Galt]If "everyone" booked 8 possible vacations while they made a choice, the value of ALL frequent flyer programs would be devalued, as customers would decide that they were useless. [QUOTE]

This behavior would not devalue frequent flyer miles, it would merely change the way award inventory is distributed. To some, the availability of "last-minute" awards is far more valuable than the availability of "330-days-in-advance" awards. People are still only taking one trip (and paying 7 redeposit fees).

What do you think about a friend who books four or five refundable tickets, and only uses one, but has a reserved seat on every flight leaving the city so he can leave whenever he has completed his work? His assistant doesn't like this much!

[QUOTE=flyatlanta][QUOTE=John Galt]If "everyone" booked 8 possible vacations while they made a choice, the value of ALL frequent flyer programs would be devalued, as customers would decide that they were useless. This is spot on. Airlines are constantly tweaking their formulae for revenue management. If it becomes the norm for ff's to cancel more award tickets a few weeks before departure, the airlines would in all likelihood increase the number of award seats available far ahead.

I don't know how it could be unethical if the airlines are suggesting it.

For example, I wanted to book award seats to Hawaii. I managed to get one for my date, but I could only get the second one outbound. Nothing was available inbound.

Since I had a ticketing deadline that could no longer be extended, the airline suggested I book the return on any date that it was available and then change it if/when the date I needed became available. There would not be any cost to me if the itinerary would be exactly the same. At worse, I would have to cancel everything, pay the redeposit fee and buy a ticket.

Essentially, I was holding a ticket that I had no intention of using at the suggestion of the airline. In the end, my waitlist came through and I changed the ticket.

That's not the same thing. You reserved one ticket and changed the date later. At no time did you have two seats on hold for one person, and certainly not for months on end.

True, but the OP is paying for the priviledge. Unfortunately, because award seats are so hard to come by, it's become dog-eat-dog to get them. I wouldn't think twice about holding reservations for 2 sets of dates if I needed to be flexible. Most others on this thread feel the same way.

Still, in my case, I was holding a seat I had no intention of using. So is the OP.

I think people like him are the reason refundable tickets are so expensive.

Let's restate that in the current situation - you are lost and know you need to get off the highway, but know know which exit. Your friend finally calls you back and tells you it's the exit that coming up - you've already passed half the cars waiting in line, but you slow immediately and get in line. Did you do something wrong? Very different than doing it intentionally and repeatedly.

As I said above, holding multiple tickets because you can't make up your mind is very different from using the option due to circumstances beyond your control. Not ideal, as others could be impacted, but to me being ethical doesn't mean looking out for others at all costs to yourself. There is middle ground.

But, like the OP, she did have seats held on a flight that she didn't expect to fly on, thus inventory was being held for her that someone else could have had.

Is it possible we may be thinking too much about this, believing that maybe it's an ethics issue and not a simple business practice. For example, "Lands' End offers one of the simplest guarantees in the industry � GUARANTEED. PERIOD.� � which allows customers to return items at any time, for any reason, for refund or replacement." If I buy a bathing suit, or underwear, wear it for a year or so, and then am unhappy with it then, I can return it. You could almost NEVER do this with any other store (making it past unethical), but with L/E, it's perfectly acceptable. Even though to other companies the practice seems foolish, and to some people unethical, L/E probably figures the added revenue of people buying their merchandise because of this outweighs what it costs them to issue refunds for returned merchandise they probably just through out or donate.

I think it's US that offers only a 24hr hold on award reservations, but Delta doesn't see a problem with that, as their window is 14 days (down from 30). Similarly, Northwest 'locks' your miles when you make a reservation, so if you only have 25k miles in your account, you can only hold one US48 reservation. Again, Delta doesn't seem to have a problem with this, because they don't have that policy.

I have to imagine it would be incredibly simple to add a flag to reservation/booking that says, "Before I confirm this itinerary, let me see if the traveller has any other itineraries, and if so, that there are no conflicts on flight times." It seems so simple to detect that the fact that we can do it makes me think it's acceptable behavior.

I hate to have to use the, "That's the way the system works" phrase, but it may be applicable in this case. I remember a previous thread about a traveller who called up the airline reservation line about 11:50p, asked some infomation about his FF balance, had the agent I think price out an itinerary, basically b/s'd with the agent for 10 minutes until midnight, at which point he asked, "Can you check FF availability for these dates..." Was this unethical to the people that maybe really needed to buy a fare by midnight that night, and didn't get connected to an agent soon enough? Was it unethical to other FF travellers who started calling up at 12:00a, got connected a few minutes later, only to find no award availability left. Or is it just the way to get things done within the (FF) system that the airline has established?

Jeff