Frequent Flyer Miles Surprise

[BobH]

I have used frequent flyer miles for a few years but always simply got a direct flight and used the miles. I recently had a chance to use miles for a trip for my son and was very happy to learn that American only charged 25,000 miles for a flight from
Boston to LA on Oct 11. He stays in LA 2 days. He then flies a short hop to San Diego on Oct 13 and returns from San Diego to Boston on Oct 16. All this for the cost of 1 ticket (25000 miles). I had no idea use of milage was this flexible. I had expected to have to use at least 50000 miles since he technically has 3 legs to the flight. Has anyone else had good experience with milage? How open ended can a ticket be and still be considered 1 flight?
My account has been charged for the miles and I have an E ticket cofirming the cost in milage is only 25000 miles.

 

[CarolA]

Yes, you can do this. It helps to get a helpful agent who books it right which it sounds like you did!

 

[ncligs]

Continental has a special going for FF miles for One Pass members if you book on line. By booking on line, it is only 20,000 miles for a roundtrip ticket. I booked 3 roundtrip tx from Pittsburgh to San Antonio for next June 27-July 4th,using FF miles, and it only cost me 60,000 miles(for 3 tx) by booking it myself on-line on Continental's website.

 

[BobH]

American also has the ability to book frequent flyer trips using miles on their website. I didn't see any discount for booking it yourself but AA puts out a quareterly list of trips you can take for 20000 miles instead of the full cost of 25000 miles. We had to juggle too many things - we trying to arrange a trip for my son's friend using his miles at the same time - it was easier to call an agent by phone to arrange everything we were doing. We were hoping to get them seats together. Not sure if that is going to happen yet. The e tickets we received had pre assigned seats for my son. The eticket his friend received had all the correct flights but no seat assigments yet. We are still checking on that. Hope it all works but if the worst that happens is they have separate seats it will be acceptable.