katzen

My sister, in order to get a seat, made a r/t reservation using her FF miles (silver preferred) back in January (since there are only a few seats assigned for FF use on each flight).

Arrive: NYC to Zurich
Depart: Paris to NYC

Her departure city has changed as has the date. The new plan is now to:

Arrive: NYC to Zurich
Depart: Frankfurt to NCY

She called the private number for silver preferred and the customer service agent she spoke to told her that she would have to mail back her paper ticket (for this type of travel they sent her a paper ticket), wait for them to process it and deposit the miles back in her account, and then she could call and make a new reservation. The only problem ... she is not guaranteed a seat will be available for those date to/from the above cities.

Does anyone have experience with using USAIR FF miles? I don't so I wasn't able to help out so I thought I would check on Fodors. Is there anything she can do or is this it?

Thanks!!

AAFrequentFlyer

If this was AA I would do the following.

1. Book and hold a new reservation. AA allows a 2 week hold for award reservation.

2. Only then I would redeposit the miles. AA charges $100 for that privilage.

3. finally "pay" with the miles for the held reservation.

I would not under any circumstance re-deposit the miles until I was assured I can get a new booking first.

At this late stage for summer award bookings to Europe, it will be long shot at best to get the desired itn.

I suggest keeping the itn as it is and work on a cheap transportation option between Frankfurt and Paris. www.whichbudget.com for flights or http://www.bahn.de/-S:-ptVORd:eRcHnd...l_guests.shtml for trains.

katzen

Thanks AA for the advice. She doesn't have enough FF miles to book another reservation and they will only let her hold a reservation for 24 hours, which wouldn't allow enough time for the paper ticket to arrive back at USAIR and be processed.

gail

I would call back and see if there is anywhere she can do this in person - I realize that there used to be in-city ticket offices for all airlines and that these have virtually disappeared, but it is worth a try.

Are you sure they will not put a hold on a reservation without enough miles? Can you "buy" miles on USAirways - perhaps put an itinerary on hold with plan to buy miles, redeposit ticket miles, rebook using these miles instead of money.

These ideas are probably a long-shot, but it can't hurt to ask.

Another thought is does she have enough miles to upgrade her reservation to business or first class?

We have changed dates on domestic USAirways FF tickets with a small fee - but since she is changing both dates and cities, it really is a whole new ticket, not just a change.

As an afterthought, we have found Silver Preferred on USAirways is worth even less than one level up FF status on other airlines - I think it is because USAirways flies so many short flights that it is really easy to accrue the 30 segments one needs to get to Silver.

Good luck.

steve

Since she has a paper ticket and US does not fly to Zurich, her flights were booked on a partner airline via the Star Alliance.

She can not make a paper ticket award exchange at an airport. The ticket along with a return fee must be mailed to the Miami processing office. Also, only Chairman's Preferred have this fee waived.

I am Chairman's Preferred and had no other choice when I needed to return a paper ticket recently via a partner airline.

Most likely the award seat will not be available as capacity for award seats is limited and this was originally booked many months ago. If it was me, I would try to make the original return work. Even if the award is available now, the exchange can take up to 4 weeks to process and might be long gone.