925

On 4/16/05 I bought 19 round trip transcontinental flights on US Air for $36.90 each, or a grand total of $701.10 mostly on Travelocity, but also on Orbitz and AA.com. I spaced them out over the next 7 months so I can take a red-eye out on Sunday night, fly all day on Monday, my day off, and get home just after dinner time. I bought these tickets because I want to earn top-tier status with you, and because I want to earn the miles for future free flights. I will never leave the airport. I am simply along for the rides to get status and earn miles. Thanks for the great price!

It occurs to me that you could easily earn over $701.10 on just a few of these seats if I cancelled my flights. For the price I paid, I can't see myself volunteering to cancel, but I would be willing to give you a list of my ticket numbers, and let you cancel all of my reservations and keep my fare (and the taxes I paid) if you would only credit my Dividend Miles account as if I really flew all of the flights. I would even pay a $100 change fee to you (for the entire list, not per reservation) to do so.

You may PM me here or post publicly here or contact me via your reservation records. If it is important to you, I would even be willing to refrain from any public comment about the exchange, either here or anywhere else.

Please contact me if you wish me to fax or email my request to you with all of my 13 digit ticket numbers and my credit card number for you to charge me up to $100 for a service/change fee for the transaction.

I suggest anyone else reading this that would accept the same treatment simply post a reply that says:

US Air, please contact me if you wish me to fax or email my request to you with all of my 13 digit ticket numbers and my credit card number for you to charge me up to $100 for a service/change fee to cancel my tickets in exchange for my earning the miles and status as if I flew the flights.

SAT Lawyer

Why not contact US directly yourself and make this same offer to them? Why extend this offer on FlyerTalk publicly? If you want to make some arrangment other than to take all 19 of the trips you booked, then the onus should be on you to contact US, not the other way around.

CPRich

So you're trying to get around the rules of a FF program, trying to buy your way to status without putting in the BIS miles, and you're openly posting it on FT?

If you're going to try to manipulate the system, you are going to have to at least waste your 19 days off to get it. Don't expect support here, IMHO.

Weird

Warrenlm

Your tone smacks of smugness to me. Just my reaction. 19 trips times the $100 or so marginal cost of carrying a pax roundtrip is less than $2K. Not sure you will even get a nibble but be sure to let us know.

RoyalFlush

.....

channa

Agreed. While the approach is unconventional, it would be a win-win for the customer and the airline. If they don't want to honor these tickets, yet don't want the PR associated with cancelling them, this would be a cheap and effective buyout. In fact, by not transporting the passenger and collecting a service charge to process this, it could possibly even be profitable.

keithguy

I agree with cAAl. The OP should make the offer to US directly rather through this forum.

But really, there's a reason that miles are only credited for tickets flown, not tickets bought. This is an example of why. I can't just sit here at YVR and buy cheap F/C CMB-SFO tickets and call for the miles. If I want those miles at that fare, I gotta go and fly those segments.

$700 for 100K miles (at least) without flying the segments? Sounds pretty doubtful to me. If I were US, I wouldn't take the offer and just let the OP use those 19 tickets. Even if one trip is cancelled, that's one less trip worth of FF miles to hand out.

dingo

Very tacky. "I knew it was a mistake and now will publicly humiliate you for me jumping all over it." I hope you folks don't get exploited by your customers like this; it's tacky at best. I love the person in the original thread who said he / she would give US all kinds of additional business b/c of this $2.00 fare...huh?

catwood

I'm completely supportive of USairways not honoring these fares...and letters like this make me even MORE supportive they won't honor them.

ClueByFour

This type of proposition (as put forth by the OP) is certainly no more devious than those to come out of CCY in the last few years (no status on cheap tickets, three rounds of concessions with the bankruptcy gun at labor's head, etc). While it's not the kind of thing I'd personally do, I'd submit that such a proposition could not be put to a more deserving group of people (upper management at CCY).

dingo

Ditto.

steves

I flew 5 short rt hops one weekend - at higher fares - just to gain status. It was an ordeal that I will probobly not repeat. This was when others were doing it so it was fun to meet up with people. Even with that benefit it is quite a time commitment - and things do go wrong, flights are late and you miss the next RT nested into your weekend itinerary, you are picked up by TSA for a full checkout because of your ticketing pattern and need to go back out through security, etc... For status that lasts one year and one encore RT to europe in the future I say let the airline make you go for it - you will have earned it.

TomBascom

The OP is, essentially, asking US to comp him (or her) to Gold (or maybe CP by the skin of his teeth...) for about $800. And offering to return these seats to inventory on top of that. That's $800. Cost to US? Just about zilch... In fact they avoid losing some money, maybe a lot if this circus turns into RTFCs and so forth, and they even get to sell the seats again (hopefully at a resonable fare this time...)

pitflyer

This is a time tested question when it comes to mileage runs; I find a cheap fare under the airlines rules, so I'm getting a boat load of miles, but then turning around and coming right home. I really only want the miles, not the transportation, so why not just give me the miles and USAirways can resell the seat, win/win right?

Never has it happened .. probably because the precedent set would be terrible (why buy miles from XYZ Airline at $.01 a mile (or whatever) when you can book a MR itinerary and trade it in for miles without flying at less than that rate). And I doubt it will.

Well history has shown that these fare mistakes sometimes are honored, sometimes are not. I will be amused to see how USAirways reacts to this one, as they are damned if they do (ie can't afford to fly people this cheap) or damned if they don't (PR nightmare).

flyupfrnt

I completely agree as well. If anyone from US is reading this, be informed i only bought 1 ticket and i'll let you cancel it for Miles Compensation but i will NOT pay a $100 fee.....would make my cost of miles too high.....