Peter Greenberg: Frequent flier mile booking scheme
I saw the acclaimed Travel Detective Peter Greenberg last night at the Book Passage Travel Writers & Photographers Conference last night. He was charming, opinionated and had the audience rolling with laughter at TSA jokes.
“I keep asking questions which is why TSA hates me. You know what TSA stands for, don’t you? ‘Thousands Standing Around.’”
You know Peter Greenberg from NBC’s Today Show and his books The Travel Detective, Hotel Secrets and The Traveler’s Diet. His new book, The Travel Detective Bible is about to be released.
Peter gave his take on the state of the travel industry, the airline industry and most importantly, a great tip [Ed.: Or questionable scheme?] for no-fail frequent flier redemption. I spoke with him afterwards and he said that I could pass this on to our readers and that it was also in discussed in his chapter, “The Truth About Frequent Flier Programs and Tickets” in his book, The Travel Detective.
Here’s Peter Greenberg’s tip for what to do when you’re having difficulty getting your free flight with your rewards miles.
You want a free flight using miles. Lets just say September 10. When you call the airline number to redeem your rewards for the ticket the reservation agent says: “Sorry, every flight is already sold out.”
Well, when is the next time I can redeem miles for this flight (lets just say between LAX and Honolulu)? “It’s sold out for the whole month,” she says. You asked her to check the following four months and still she says they’re all sold out.
“Couldn’t I fly standby?” you ask?
“No,” she says. “You’re not allowed to fly standby on a frequent flier ticket.”
You push her to find a date when you can take that route and she eventually finds one several months out.
Peter says, grab it. You still want to go on September 10, so you hang up and call the normal reservations line and ask if there is a seat available for September 10 without telling her that you’re flying on a miles ticket. Just act like this is a first time request.
When she asks you “How many will be traveling?” Answer eight.
Cancel the reservations later on, but keep calling every day leading up to the date of departure to find out if there are still seats available. Then, show up that morning for the first flight. Hand them your frequent flier ticket. If there’s a seat, they’ll give it to you. If not, they’ll put you on standby for the next flight.
Don’t believe it’ll work? It did for Peter Greenberg. He relays the same story on page 142 of The Travel Detective (revised and updated).
Have you ever used this method to redeem a free flight using miles? Do you have an alternative tip to share that worked for you? Is this unethical?
15 Comments on “Peter Greenberg: Frequent flier mile booking scheme”
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August 17th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
Ok I have had it!
Mr. Greenberg isn’t telling you the most important part of it all. Yes, you can make the reservation for 8- but what he isn’t telling you, is that the airlines have gotten savvy to this and will only hold non-ticketed reservations for 48 hours- then they automatically cancel out.
So, in theory- sounds great, right? But, not realistic, unless you plan to call every few days to hold seats. Also, there is a heightened amount of travelers, so unless it is an unpopular route, or off-off season, more than likely you’ll be kept on standby more than once through out the day- evening-, etc.
Mr. Greenberg has a habit of not sharing all the details –did he also mention that you don’t make the reservations under your name? Of course not- otherwise it would ruin it for him. Remember- the chef always leaves out one or two ingredients when sharing a recipe.
Good luck listening to his advice all!
August 17th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
I certainly wouldn’t have a trip all planned and count on it working. All you need is an agent who goes by the book and it won’t work. How this guy sells books is beyond me.
August 17th, 2007 at 12:36 pm
This advice is bad advice. Tricking the airline industry
by making bogus reservations hurts everyone trying to
fly. Getting something for free by trickery is not ethical.
August 17th, 2007 at 12:38 pm
Hi Jane,
Thanks for your added insight. At the event Peter gave the example of asking for the first flight of the day (probably not a popular route if extremely early) but that was not mentioned in the book so I left it out. And yes, he did suggest to call every day until your flight as mentioned above.
I’m still curious to hear how other folks secure their free flights with frequent flier miles.
Jen,
Los Angeles Times Travel Deal Detective
August 17th, 2007 at 12:39 pm
I am sure I would find Mr. Greenberg in the market, with twenty items in the 15 items or less checkout line, claiming at the last second, that his 5 yogurts should really count as one item. For goodness sake-making bogus reservations is a silly idea, and causes problems for all travelers. Plan ahead and get your reservations on the up and up.
August 17th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
This is really an insidious suggestion. Imagine!! now there will be all sorts of reservation no-shows, superfluous calls to the airline reservation centers, all for a limited number of freuent flier awardees who have nothing better to do than to badger this part of our transportation system with unnecessary, unproductive and plain time-wasting effort. My guess this is like an inside stock tip. The tip may be useful, but once it gets published and everyone has the tip, and more people go to the stock, it’s value diminishes rapidly.
August 17th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
I don’t get the mechanics of how this “tip” works.
You repeatedly make (and then cancel) a reservation for 8 seats over the course of months in order to make sure they remain unsold until you want to fly?
The airlines will then let you use a ticket dated 5 months later to fly on this flight?
Doesn’t seem reasonable in several different dimensions. Even if it DOES work it seems to fit the definition of wire fraud fairly well. At BEST one is artificially ensuring that the airline can’t sell seats that they have because you’ve asserted that you intend to buy them. That, in turn, jacks up the costs for the airline and therefore ticket prices for eveyone.
How this can either be classified as a “tip”, or, in good conscience suggested to anyone is beyond me.
I really hope I’m missing some vital part of the process. Perhaps further explanation?
Thx.
August 17th, 2007 at 2:48 pm
Until I read this, I had a fair amount of respect for Mr. Greenberg. Now… not so much. I would fully participate in showing up with the ticket 5 months early, but would never do the bogus reservation thing. That would be spelled FRAUD. I hope the airlines remember you and put you on their “special” customer list and chalk your bags..
August 18th, 2007 at 8:55 am
Is repeatedly reserving a block of seats you don’t plan to pay for unethical? Yes! I can’t believe Greenberg gets away with dispensing this kind of advice. It’s not just unethical, it’s ridiculous. Who wants to gamble their vacation on a chance like this? Greenberg is a dinosaur who seems to get a huge ego boost from letting the little folk in on his outdated, nonsensical tips. I can just see him puffing out his chest at the check-in desk, acting like he’s a big shot because he’s got mid-tier frequent flier status and an award ticket. I hope no one actually takes this guy seriously.
August 19th, 2007 at 2:40 am
I was at the talk, and I didn’t get the impression that he was saying to continually reserve seats every day up until the flight. I appreciated how he looks out for the consumer.
August 19th, 2007 at 5:47 am
I fly United. I never had much trouble booking frequent flier miles. I may have to change a day or two but it always seems to work. We’ve had 5 trips to Europe, two to Canada and I book the kids back and forth to Texas every year. Sometimes I don’t get super saver, sometimes I do. It’s free (almost)!
Tips.
Make reservations early, Europe 6 months in advance. Work around their schedule, then schedule your vacation. Flight are full now, not much room for you.
If you don’t have kids in school, take vacations in the spring or fall, slack travel times.
Make sure when you book St. Johns, NF that you don’t get St. John, NB.
August 19th, 2007 at 2:55 pm
All these true believers make me sick when defending the most offensive of all corporations, the airlines. It is the airlines that smugly lie to straight faced to their customers every day. Through their bait and switch tactics, their computer programs designed to extort every last cent of revenue possible from an ignorant traveler, $795 fare with $400 of “fees” “surcharges” and “taxes” added at purchase..shall I go on?
How quick you are to forget those huge fines levied against two airlines for cheating travelers out of millions in “fuel surcharges”! Fines reported in this very newspaper!
How quick you jump to espouse the corporate line! You should be ashamed! Likely you are airline employees or their public relations army.
Anyone successful knows that to win you must learn the rules better than the next guy and in turn use those rules against him. The airline industry has written the rules and some of us are bright enough to use those rules against them to mitigate their greed.
There used to be a book available called “The Airline Passengers Guerrilla Handbook” by George Brown that detailed the abuses of the airline industry and gave valuable strategies to defend yourself with. I’ll bet that book is out of print today.
How an airline can charge $130 for “fees” and “surcharges” on an award ticket from CGK to BKK is a mystery to me. That $130 is only $100 less than their current internet fare! How that same airline year after year can fail to post to my frequent flyer account one segment out of many of several trips a year I fly on that airline thereby denying me my rightful ascension to gold status? Because they can!
The airlines have no intention of holding up to their end of the bargain. They never have.
The way to tell if an airline is lying to you is easy: their lips are moving.
Grow up and smell the kerosene!
August 19th, 2007 at 10:37 pm
Delta’s frequent-flyer program has become a farce. It is very difficult to get any flight to almost anywhere I want to travel without using 50,000 miles to obtain the ticket even though Delta advertises that one can obtain flights for 25,000 reward miles. I end up using United’s frequent-flyer program for this reason. While I’m not sure that Mr. Greenberg’s advice is practical, he is certainly not enabling people to take something that doesn’t belong to them (as some of the other commentators have indicated) Therefore, if anyone or any entity is unethical, it would be those airlines like Delta who promote customer loyalty by promising free trips with 25,000 frequent-flyer miles, but fail to have any seats available even if the traveler is flexible about dates and books long in advance.
August 20th, 2007 at 7:32 am
How incredibly awful: suggest fraudulent manipulation. Like that’s a good dies. Surely the travel industry and airlines in particular are guilty of the same thing, IMHO. But two wrongs don’t make a right.
Instead, complain, right to the board room of major airlines. Let them know that you vote with tickets. The whole tomfoolery of air travel is ready for someone with a bit of capital to go in and Walmart the entire thing. This way we can get rid of the bloat and chicanary of these boors and charlatans called airline boards.
August 20th, 2007 at 8:35 am
Well, I’m not smelling the kerosene, but I am remembering when frequent flier programs didn’t exist at all. There’s no rule that says they have to have these programs, just as there’s no rule that says I have to join and participate. The one rule there is that they and I understand quite well is competition. So don’t reward the airlines that are miserable at honoring their rewards, and give the ones that do well by you your business.
Personally, I find American’s Aadvantage program to work quite well, and that’s just by playing by the rules. I have gotten gate agents to upgrade award seats at the last minute, but that’s because seats were available and I had upgrades in my account to use, and most importantly, I asked nicely, rather than expecting in that pompous high-status way we all hate.. In one sense, everybody won.
They have upgraded their online reservation system for using awards so that you can see what’s available all around your dates and routes, and will work with you to change the route once booked to get what you wanted.
don’t forget, it’s free. Not sure how much more we can ask.
Is booking bogus reservations to game the system unethical? If you have to ask…