United cancels four mile Hong Kong award tickets

This is still going?! I'm just gonna go look for next deal! ps. Andy Bluebear, I totally was just being [funny] sarcastic, sorry it didn't come across right. Didn't mean to pick on you.

@Bob - I think the point I am making is that it is a commercial choice that airlines make to engage (or not engage) in fare distribution with fuel surcharges. I know this because this is what I do for a living (on the airline side). As I mentioned earlier, the consumer level fuel dump issues are usually such a tiny percentage of overall interline billings that taking action to stop them would often cost more than the additional revenue that those actions would generate. To use another analogy, a grocer may chose to put samples of his vegetables out on the street to entice customers in, but sometimes it rains and they get ruined. If it rained every day, he'd no longer find that the benefits outweigh the costs and he'd stop doing it. That's what airlines do. When more people begin to use a specific method to fuel dump (and believe me, there are methods used by some travel agents that make the folks on FT seem quite amateur in comparison) and the cost-benefit analysis favours changing the rules, the airline will change the rules. Until they do that, the rules are still what the airlines want them to be. So, in response to your questions : 1) Because mass market publicity and the resulting adoption of the publicised methodology pretty much pushes the cost-benefit analysis into the red as too many people use it and skew its benefits. So they act quickly to change the rules. 2) If someone engages in throwaway ticketing as part of a fuel dump, that is a different story. Most fuel dumps (again, not necessarily the FT ones) are perfectly legitimate though. I would not consider a throwaway segment on a fuel dump to be ethical. 3) That's something I completely disagree with and was something I opposed vehemently back when I served on TalkBoard (IIRC, both Lucky and Gary also voted with me on that issue). If the goal of FT is to share information, the access to information should not be restricted artificially, for better or for worse. 4) Believe me, airline revenue accounting departments know more about fuel dumps than the most active FTer has forgotten. Any basic revenue accounting software can identify every fuel dumped PNR on a flight in no more than a few seconds if someone wanted to go fishing for it. Using the regulations to avoid ticketing with fuel surcharges is not a violation of anything and airlines will not accuse anyone of violating anything as a result. Interesting discussion that I don't think we necessarily disagree on in principle, but rather just on the semantics of some of the applications.

Sean M.: I appreciate you trying another example, but don't agree that airlines intend fuel-dumped fares for reasons stated up-thread. Btw, I understand how fuel-dumps generally work (e.g., 1x, 3x, OJ). Are fuel dumps really intended by airlines? I'll posit some thoughts: 1) If the airlines intended fuel dumped fares, there would be no need for code words and mystery. Why not out in the open? If they are intended, they could be replicated in the future and there would not be backlash at a blog such as AFWD for revealing a popular trick. 2) Contrast fuel-dumped fares with hidden-city ticketing, throwaway ticketing, etc. Fuel dumping is like hidden-city ticketing and throwaway ticketing on crack, of course. In your example, the second leg, ATL-SAV, is most likely a throwaway ticket. But, here's the distinction: fares that lead to hidden-city ticketing or throw-away ticketing (such as domestic fares without fuel dumps) may always be around due to airlines wanting to differentiate between the relative pockets of different markets. The loopholes for "tricks", on the other hand, are closed from time to time (e.g., AFWD). 3) Why does flyertalk not want the "tricked" deals to appear on the mileage runs page? If it's a normal fare, why is it moved to trick-it page? By your implication, a fuel-dumped fare and any other fare shouldn't be treated differently. This different treatment by flyertalk to protect these kinds of fuel-dumped fares are, of course, to keep it from the penetrating eye of airlines as much as possible. I even know some tricks just by being a flyertalk member. I wonder how fast my post would be closed if I posted them on flyertalk? 4) It appears that fuel dumpers for the most part get away with it (which, I'm perfectly OK with). What if an airline catches a fuel dumper, just as they might catch an egregious hidden-city ticketing passenger? Would it be OK for an airline to either ask the passenger to pay for all of the fuel surcharge money that the airline lost, or such passenger would risk cancellation of mileage account and ban on future travel? I bet flyertalk would be in an uproar and mad... the same folks who say United shouldn't honor a 4 mile award fare. Price increase post-purchase doesn't sound so good now, huh? I want to again state how poor the 50% off coupon analogy is. Let's just take hidden-city ticketing. LAX-ORD one-way costs $200, just as a hypothetical, but LAX-ORD-MKE is $150. I only want to end up in ORD and will buy the LAX-ORD-MKE ticket and throw-away ORD-MKE. ORD-MKE is a 25% off coupon by your description. At least ORD-MKE is a part of a normally published fare and isn't some random flight like the 13-miler that passenger has little to no likelihood of flying. The most ironic thing is that I support fuel dumps, and I don't wish to expose any tricks. But, I do, again, want to point out the hypocrisy of those who fuel dump and the concept that fuel-dumps are excepted from moral judgment but mistake fares are not.

@YVR604miler Er, I was sticking up for you, you boob. I guess some people are just that contrary that they like to disagree/look for an argument wherever they can find it.

Ok, lets try to put this in simpler terms. Supposing that a ticket from New York to Tokyo cost $1000 plus $800 in fuel surcharges. However, adding a segment from (for example) Atlanta to Savannah added $50 in fare, but took away the $800 in fuel surcharges on the first leg. If you actually wanted to buy NYC-TYO//ATL-SAV on a single ticket, the CORRECT price would be $1050 and no fuel surcharges. There is no "mistake" in play here. It isn't as if the correct price is $1850 and you are somehow getting away with a lower price due to a temporary error. The actual price intended to be charged is being charged. The lower prices comes about because of the rules that are set by the airline itself. This may seem counter-intuitive (buying more gets you a lower price), but then again so is the fact that buying a round-trip fare is often lower than buying just a one-way fare on the same flight. Bottom line - a fuel dump is buying something at a price that the seller actually intends to sell it at, while a mistake fare is taking advantage of an error to buy something at a price that the seller does not intend. There is a huge difference between the two.