Questions and Answers

Hi Lucky/all –

Recently flew an ultra long-haul flight and the frequent flyer program I credited the flight to ended up giving me the miles twice. I believe this happened because I contacted the program after I had been credited for a preceding flight segment, but not the ultra long-haul flight, which prompted them to manually credit me the miles for the flight. Then, the next day I was credited with miles for the ultra long-haul flight again, which I believe was the original mileage credit that had been delayed for some reason. My mileage activity with the program lists me as flying the ultra long-haul flight on consecutive days (quite the feat).

Obviously the [I]right[/I] thing to do is notify the program of the mistake and have my balance adjusted.

But a few questions to those interested:

[INDENT]Without getting into details of the program, generally speaking, what responsibility falls on the member when a frequent flyer program makes a mileage credit mistake?

Those who have experienced mileage credit mistakes, did you proactively notify the frequent flyer program? If not, were the mistakes later caught and fixed by the program or did you retain the miles?

Finally, what would [I]you [/I]do in this situation?[/INDENT]

For context, this is a program I do not currently have status with but that I plan to attain status this year. Logging back-to-back ultra long-haul flights obviously helps get me there faster, but should be able to hit my goal either way this year.

Any thoughts/insights welcome!

Welcome [USER=4924]@IstNW[/USER] – I’d just sit tight. They may claw back the miles in a month or two and if they do, you’re no worse off than you should have been. And if the miles stay then you got a nice bonus.

This happened to me on Air Canada when crediting to United probably 5 years ago. We boarded the Air Canada flight in Toronto and taxiied out to the runway. A snowstorm blew in way faster than expected, and we ultimately went back to the gate and ended up spending the night in Toronto. The entire plane just was rescheduled for the next morning. My United account ended up being credited twice, and my best guess is because my boarding pass was scanned and the plane left the gate. Then, we had a new flight number the following day. This was Toronto to Israel, so some 6,000 miles or so.

Anyways, I think I gave myself 90 days for the miles to be taken back, and they never did. Somewhat shortly thereafter, I booked some United award and used the miles. I just considered it my indirect payment for the forced night in Toronto 🙂