Teh Penalty Box | part 2

I have the SWUs.

You'll drop to plat nex year (most likely) so you don't "have" to fly. But if you don't intend to fly, what's the point? You'll lose the SWUs next Feb of you don't trade, but I don't think that was the intent of the match.

I am 50-50 but award travel will be a big winner for sure at the end of the year.

I am in a similar situation: I want to go ahead and use my PresidentialPlus flex EQM's, of which I have 7000 left. I am booked to about 93,500 with UA and am not planning on booking anything else with them in 2012. I got matched to ExPlat with AA as well, and am going to move the remaining biz and lesiure travel to thAAt airline through the end of the year. I assume that you got matched to the same level, and my opinion is that the benefits are great over there. YMMV, of coruse!

Howdy from teh pit of Teh Pit (Colgan's A3 gates at IAH):

Strange occurrence re: Vayama RGN ticket. I just got an email from Vayama saying that they will re-instate my RGN ticket, but a quick check of that reservation on vayama.ca shows me that it is still valid. It is ticketed on ANA stock, so maybe they sent that email to everyone? I wonder why I got it, unless they went ahead and cancelled my ticket and haven't updated the system yet. Hmm...

Remember that FEQMs won't get you to 1K so they are really of no value if you're booked to 93500.

Scary to think sUA mainline runs so few flights.

They are running a LOT of "direct" flights right now to conserve flight numbers. I'd have to check the 10-Q to get the actual numbers but I don't think sCO runs that many more daily than sUA does.

VX is basically guaranteed to hemorrhage cash on ex-LAX/SFO HNL runs -- UA will have them handily beat on the cost, frequency, and yield fronts, and will use its dominance of the tour operator contracts and the power of MileagePlus to guarantee VX is the low-fare laggard to Hawaii (a position VX can't afford given its use of the least efficient aircraft for mainland-Hawaii flying).

Should make for some good fare match MR opportunities, though, for the few weeks or months such a service would exist.

Howdy from the French Polynesia I'm totally loving it here however I have to cut my trip shorter than expected since my Grandpa's health has taken a turn for the worse. I called ANZ and they totally took care of me along with the United agents that I worked with this afternoon to create award space that was not even available at all on PPT-AKL-CHC so I can get the CHC-SIN-FUK on SQ and FUK-NRT on NH...

I just hope I can get back in time and that my Grandpa gets better...if not then I'll be kicking myself for taking this trip.

Won't that actually be Allegiant???

Just dropping in, having boarded my flight CLT-IAD and having a Silver get upgraded before me, a 1K. The gate agents apologized, but stated that the system is going by price of ticket over status; that they'd noticed on the manifest that I was a 1k, but they couldn't override the system, they'd moved me to #1 on the monitor list, to print out the ticket. I'd suspected this happening before, but now I know this to be a fact! They told me it'd been happening to GS', but that UA had fixed that part, but it was still happening to 1K's: someone who's paid a higher ticket price will be upgraded over someone with higher status.

Me no likey this.

At least we know now...

My end of year travel has always tended to be awards - going to meet the ClubCarlson promo so I can continue to have the hotel part on lockdown.

I want to put my two free Hyatt nights to good use. My miles bank still looks good.

Why are they conserving flight numbers? Monday's flight had 3 flights with the same number. Seems that creates a ton of complications...

If the silver was on a Y or B fare then that is correct.

Because they don't have enough numbers otherwise.

Did they not have a more direct routing home?

They go beyond speed traps on that road.

They did not have anything from Auckland to the USA, I was willing to pay additional miles for an Oceania to US Reward but they could not open up space at all to LAX/SFO/YVR on NZ just PPT-AKL-CHC.

Now I have to run to the Hilton to see if I can change my reservation by a day and arrange for the Ferry back to Papeete from Moorea on the 17th evening.

SEA Fare Enforcement and DHS just came through the light rail to ensure I paid my $2.75. Reminds me of using TSA on Amtrak for the Olympics ...

What about ppt akl SYD lax/sfo-Mia?

Probably a dumb question, but FEQMs still count towards 1K as long as they are applied before 75k, right?

I was considering that place but I thought I didn't have time (got weather delay txt when I finished inhaling some crappy chicken sandwich)

Hooray, Sprint appears to have stopped greedily sucking ass.