Penalties for cancelling/changing award (FF) tickets

This page lists airline's penalties for changing or cancelling an award (frequent flyer) ticket. In the worst cases you're penalized 100% of your miles.

Great stuff to know before you commit.

FF miles are just an airline scam IMO

busman7 wrote:FF miles are just an airline scam IMO

I'm curious what you mean by that. BTW, I'm not disagreeing with you...I've never used FF miles so I really have no idea how they work. But I do feel a bit of jealousy when friends/family get a free flight via FF miles. So anything to assuage that jealousy would be good.

On my RTW the AA award points amounted to the amazing amount where I got a whole 3 free nights in a $60 room in Bogota.

The only way I can see one getting "free" flights is to always fly business or 1st class OR buy points, which kind of defeats the purpose?

There is nothing free in this world, it's all a marketing ploy aimed at the mathematically challenged.

Some of the people at flyertalk.com are craaaazy. They get bajillions of miles. I think, if you're serious about the FF miles you have to get them through credit cards etc, because you just don't earn that much for flying, unless you fly ALL THE TIME.

With that being said, I booked my first reward flight through the Aadvantage program recently. I'd been saving up miles from flights, the diner's club program, and a few other things (like points for donating to charities.) I don't do CCs, which makes it hard to save miles, so this represented about 5 years of casual saving.

And it got me a one-way coach-class ticket from the US to the UK. Not the best, but still, a free ticket is a free ticket.

A good thing to keep in mind is that most airlines now are in alliances. So if you're a FF member of at least one airline from each alliance, you can apply any miles from flights on other members to that account. For example, I can apply the miles I'll earn from my upcoming Qantas flight to my Aadvantage account because they're both members of the oneworld alliance. So that's worth keeping in mind.

KnottyNikki wrote:Some of the people at flyertalk.com are craaaazy. They get bajillions of miles.

Truer words were never spoken/typed

Methinks some of them have waaaaay tooooo much money & no life

As far as the Europe ticket is concerned, I have seen return flights (on Air Transat) YYZ-MAN FOR $99 CAD taxes in so that's really no great savings

Trouble with Alliances is most have one or more airlines I refuse to fly. Did my RTW in 2009/10 with One World which has Qantas (that screwed me big-time) as a carrier also American Airlines that has completely become user UNFRIENDLY`since going chapert 11. I now live in TACA's home country who happen to be in the Star Alliance with the pathetic Air Crappy (Canada)

Wow, I've never heard of Transat but I was checking out their website and their fares are really low. I live in the US, but in Michigan, which isn't *too* far from Toronto. The cheapest I've ever gotten a flight to Europe from my hometown, TVC, is ~$700 roundtrip, often more. Is there some kind of 'catch' to Transat? Have you flown them before?

Still, I figure the absolute lowest I'd find a one-way flight from TVC-LHR would be 500-700 around spring break time, so the fact I managed to get that with points I haven't put much, if any, effort or time into collecting seems pretty decent to me. That's $700 more to spend on doing things.

I love FF programs. I fly constantly for free, works like a charm.

My situation is unique though... I'm self employed and am able to constantly put large expenditures on my credit cards so it's easy to rack up the points. I can't imagine trying to save points "normally" - it would take forever to accumulate enough to get any appreciable rewards...

Cheers,
Terry

KnottyNikki wrote:Wow, I've never heard of Transat but I was checking out their website and their fares are really low. I live in the US, but in Michigan, which isn't *too* far from Toronto. The cheapest I've ever gotten a flight to Europe from my hometown, TVC, is ~$700 roundtrip, often more. Is there some kind of 'catch' to Transat? Have you flown them before?

Still, I figure the absolute lowest I'd find a one-way flight from TVC-LHR would be 500-700 around spring break time, so the fact I managed to get that with points I haven't put much, if any, effort or time into collecting seems pretty decent to me. That's $700 more to spend on doing things.

Actually the twice I booked Transat to Cuba a few yrs ago they put on a Sky Service (Sky Squish) plane but from reports they seem to be your average sun destination cattle-car carrier.

Don't think there's a catch to the super cheap rates, rather it's a way to fill seats during the transition period when their business switches from summer Europe to the winter Caribbean destinations.

Agree with Terry on the FF deal & believe that's the case with the Flyer Talk proponents. However for the normal person they're just an airline scam aimed at the gullible.