I'm on my way to DC or I will be in a couple of hours. My original flight left at 10:10 this morning and it's now 1:04 mtn time. In the meantime, I've volunteered my seat twice. The first time I went from business to 1st class on the next flight(both on 777s). This time I went from 1st to 1st but I'm not sure of the aircraft for the flight I'll be on. I did ask for and receive a meal voucher for lunch - it's $6 and I got it because I gave up a seat with a meal(or that's why she was willing).

I need to be there tonight but I didn't even buy the original ticket - I'm going to training because I'm a volunteer trainer. I'm missing registration, dinner and the reception all of which I have attended in the past and are no big problem to miss.

Maybe I should have known it was going to be this kind of day. My coffee was free this morning at Panera, thanks to the nice kid behind the counter who looks something like me. One of these tickets might be his ticket home at Christmas or his brother's Thanksgiving ticket or the tickets for us to go to his brother's race in October or......

rad

My original flight left at 10:10 this morning and it's now 1:04 mtn time. In the meantime, I've volunteered my seat twice. The first time I went from business to 1st class on the next flight(both on 777s). This time I went from 1st to 1st but I'm not sure of the aircraft for the flight I'll be on. I did ask for and receive a meal voucher for lunch - it's $6 and I got it because I gave up a seat with a meal(or that's why she was willing).

Ah yes, the pleasures of Sunday travel. Did you know that there are people who deliberately try to plan their trips to match yours (that is, buy tickets on flights that become overbooked, and then give up their seats for all sorts of freebies).

Their planning is the polar opposite of mine. Of course, they'd kill to have access to the data we have. They probably wouldn't mind our fare costs, either, although the way things are going for you, your tickets might work out to be almost as cheap as ours. ;-)

-synchronicity, really should start flying again.

I got my first travel voucher from USAir last year....I was never able to use it in the 12 months it was valid. I tried a couple of times, but they never had seats availible in that class.

Finally, about a month before it was set to expire I called them up and said "I want to use this travel voucher, on these days." This lead to a heated argument with the operator. I gave them the details on the seat class, then said "where can I go starting from city X?" She told me I had to pick a city for her to check, so I said any city! Just tell me where I can go. She insisted I had to pick a city, so I asked her to check the highest alphabetical city that they fly no. No dice, she wouldn't even look.

Anyway, I was kind of pissed. I got bumped, took a flight through a different airport where my connection was delayed for hours. And I got nothing...Argh.

I got my first travel voucher from USAir last year....I was never able to use it in the 12 months it was valid.

For United and US Air, the voucher is good for 12 months and can be ticketed as far as a year out from there. I recently used an almost expired US Air voucher to book a Denver to Boston trip in mid-September. I did it at the airport before another flight because you have to do it at a "ticket office" but I was flying anyway and planned a little extra time.

I haven't had a United voucher in awhile but we were able to use free tickets from the fly 3/get 1 free promotion for my older son's spring break ticket and my daughter's ticket home for my younger son's graduation.

The only restriction I've hit is that they can't be code-shared flights - not a big problem for me on United but the US Air ticket was definitely only heading to the East Coast from Denver.

rad