Trying To Fly

Between us, TBG and I have somehow accumulated 112,000 American Airlines points.  

Have you priced airline tickets lately?  Even Allegiant, our go-to-for-cheap-fares carrier, wants hundreds more dollars to fly me to see my grandbabies... or to fly all four of them to fly to see us..... than they did before Pandemica..... and certainly more than they were during Pandemica.

But that shouldn't matter, right?  We have all those points.  That should cut the cost in half... at least... or that was what we imagined.  TBG and I were on the hook for two of those tickets; rather than put ourselves through airports, we'll redistribute that money to the younger crew.  And there are all those points, which should have made this a cash-less transaction.

Or so we thought.

Little Cuter figured out dates and ruled out certain times and then she went on the website.  Armed with all the information in the land (KTN, loyalty number, birthdates, account numbers, sign in information), she found flights, followed all the directions, filled in all the little boxes, and was unable to pay.

She tried.  She used to do this as part of her job.  She's talented.  She failed.  More than once.

She called the help line.  It wasn't much help.  She had to go back in and hold a trip then pay with miles except she didn't have enough miles to pay for all of it so she could buy more miles (for $1600) to pay for the rest of the $548 trip.

Yes, the numbers are correct.  Yes, it is inexplicable.  Yes, she hung up.

She called back.  The same woman answered.  She hung up and sent her mama an email confessing that she was unable to complete the task to which she had been assigned.  She was abashed.  She was losing her mind.  She had to stop.

I read the email after we spoke on the phone and I heard the saga from her own lips.  I promised that I would attack the problem when I got home from Pilates.  I wasn't thrilled to step in, but the kid asked; there was no choice.

I cleared my desk.  I gathered the relevant numbers on several pieces of paper surrounding the computer.  I logged on.... and was refused entry to my account.  I have the password written down.  Instead of arguing with the site, I reset it and moved on.

I ticked the Use Miles box and entered the dates, assuming that a one way ticket would require 20K miles.  I don't know why I thought that, but I did.  I was so very, very wrong.

I didn't have enough miles in my account to pay for any part of the trip.  I signed out and went into TBG's account, which had more than enough miles for some of the trip.  The only way to do it with miles was to book separate reservations.  That complicated the seat assignment situation, but I got through it.  

The longer it took to figure things out, the higher the price went.  The more I tried to use the miles, the more miles it seemed that I needed to buy.  And they were quite pricey.

I closed the computer.  I sent Little Cuter links to the work I had done.  I hugged TBG for a long time.  

She called me to say she couldn't think about it either.  We'll try again in the morning.  We all want this to happen.  It shouldn't be this hard.