I posted this under the "Airline" section but thought I would post under the Europe section as well since the travel is to Europe and some of you may have had experience with this.

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!!

I would try posting at the following in the US Airways forum.

http://www.flyertalk.com/milesfr.shtml

What US airways forum? As far as I know there is no separate forum by the name of the airways. You can categorize, but all gets lumped into one does it not??

At the url I posted previously, there are separate forums for airlines. This is not a Fodor's forum!

The link refers the op to the Flyertalk message board,not the Fodor's airlines' section.

Rather than lose her reservation, can she find a cheap flight Frankfurt to Paris for the return?

Thanks Lydia, I will try that site.

Judy, my sister and i were planning on flying out of paris on our last day but i found airfare r/t to and from frankfurt for $500 cheaper so I booked my return out of Frankfurt instead of Paris. I am taking a train from Frankfurt to Paris and staying an additional day. My sister was going to do the same thing (take a train with me to Frankfurt and stay an additional day) but she the problem with her awards ticket arose.

I guess I'll go to Frankfurt myself .. I just thought it was odd that USAIR was so strict when it came to award flights so thought i would check with award travel experts.

I'm definitely going to look into this other forum posted here. Thanks again!!

The reason she has paper tickets is because she is not flying on US Air to Zurich. US Air does not serve Zurich; therefore she is using a partner airline for that segment and thus the paper ticket instead of an e-ticket. The only thing she can do is if she has enough ff points to book a second trip, do that and then turn in the original ticket and have the miles returned to her account. If she does not have enough ff points to do that I would buy a ticket on a discount airline such as Ryan Air and fly Paris (Beauvais,France) to Frankfurt and then take the Frankfurt flight to NYC. RyanAir flight prices vary quite a lot but are always cheap.

Larry J