Have saved miles for a trip to Australia next year and am afraid of the news on TV. Should I apply for trip now and hope for the best?

or you could go to:<BR>www.awardguard.com<BR>

Has anybody joined the award guard program and can give us some feed back?

Hi Vicky,<BR>If I were you, I would redeem my miles as quickly as possible. Pick a date and get the miles out of your account. You can always change your date. <BR><BR>

Went to website -- here is cost (seems worth it re:trip to Australia):<BR><BR>1 year $119.00<BR>2 years $214.00<BR><BR>Each Additional Family Member<BR>1 year $79.00<BR>2 years $142.00<BR><BR>Have no personal experience with this group, however.

Think about it: You file Chapter 11 to reorganize. You want to stay in business. You need to keep your loyal customers in a very competitive industry. The LAST thing you do is to really upset these people by canceling their FF miles. You avoid that if at all possible. You cannot survive on the Mom and Pop once a year flyer. On the other hand, if you are going out of business....bye, bye miles.<BR><BR>I think the United miles will be okay. They need the frequent flyers and they cannot afford to send them all to the other airlines. The industry created a monster and now must live with it.

You can't always "change your date" after purchase, frequent flyer mile tickets have TONS of restricions, and there are limits on when you can use them, you can't just pick a date and hope for the best, it has to be available for that date and flight ect...in a specific class of service. The change fees, if it is allowed would break you. I would trade them in now, but only if you are sure of the date (and have several back up dates).. and even if UA files chapter 11 they will continue to operate flights for years to come.

This same question regarding USAirways received many speculative answers. Since one can not rely on past experience, all else is just a guess, hopefully using some common sense. As said above, an airline can not afford to alienate its more frequest customers. However, the find print in all FF programs allows them to do whatever they want.<BR><BR>It is hard to believe that any scheme a customer might come up with - picking a date and changing it, etc. - the airline would not have already thought of. If it were that simple to protect miles, all of us with a zillion miles would do it. A free FF ticket is not transferrable to another person, airline, date. You can "unexchange" the miles for a fee and put them back in your account, but you can't just change the date. And if there is no airline to honor a future ticket, I can't imagine it would be worth anything.<BR><BR>Now, I have just speculated as well - the truth is no one knows because the rules have not been written yet.

As long as it is "business as usual" for United and US Airways, bookings for frequent flyer award tickets will continue as usual.<BR><BR>But the airlines altogether have given out billions of frequent flyer miles unredeemed so far and thus owe travelers altogether millions of free round trips. I can see that, together with getting out from under onerous labor contracts, getting out from under the liability of these miles being a motivation for creditors' forcing the airline into real bankruptcy.<BR><BR>Travel tips:<BR>http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/travel.htm