Original Routing Credit

In the comments of my last post a fellow BoardingArea blogger mentioned original routing credit so I thought I would talk about that some.  Many times I use this is a “double-dip”, but it applies in my situation over the weekend as well so I will discuss both situations.

I live in a Star Alliance hub which means the majority of direct flights will result in Star Alliance (United, US Airways, Continental) credit.  Since direct flights out of CLT are often double the cost of connecting flights at the 7 day mark and I have to book the cheapest logical fare I rarely book the direct on US Airways.  This becomes my ace-in-the-hole.  If I’m somewhere like MCI and have a mechanical issue on my cheap Delta ticket I request to be endorsed over to the direct on US Airways.  I give US Airways my United number so I earn United miles on my new flight and I fax my ticket, boarding passes (VERY important) and a letter saying I was *involuntarily* rerouted to Delta to request mileage for the flight I was supposed to be on.

For all intents and purposes  I was going to fly every segment as I had booked it until a weather issue forced irregular operations.  Since I was involuntarily rerouted and that rerouting cost me miles I intended to earn I will fax United a copy of my ticket, boarding passes, and and explanation of my request.

I always do this by fax because if you mail it they want the originals and you must part with them.  If it gets lost in the mail too bad.

From my errors when I first attempted this I learned that you must send them a copy of the eTicket (which usually isn’t an issue to obtain online from where you bought the ticket) since that lists the ticket number, the price paid, and the itinerary as purchased.  You must also send them the boarding passes of the flights you actually flew.  Maybe that don’t always require this, but it did end my first request because I had already trashed my BPs.  Of course you must also send a quick note stating what you’d like them to do.  They aren’t psychic and receiving a fax with a ticket and some BPs isn’t always obvious.  I’ll post my sample letter in a future post.

How do I keep track of boarding passes?  I try to always check in online and I use CutePDF to “print” the boarding pass to a PDF.  I keep these PDFs for at least a year since they take up very little space.  If I can’t check in online then I mentally make a note of that and hold onto the paper boarding pass until mileage posts.

Can anyone out there confirm if this can be requested for voluntary reroutes?  I always figured that changing to a routing that would get me in earlier was payment enough and I didn’t deserve original routing credit.  This happens occasionally with Delta’s kiosks now where I’m supposed to connect in ATL and I change to connecting in CVG which cuts out some miles.  Just last week I was supposed to be BDL-ATL-CLT but changed to BDL-CVG-CLT and lost a handful of miles in the process.