Two interesting developments involving my red haired step child account with Czech Airlines recently. In an attempt to clean up their books the rules regarding their Ok+ mileage program are being amended in several unfriendly ways. Additionally I tried booking a revenue ticket with them on a fare that may or may not have been filed correctly and may or may not have been ticketed correctly.
I have ~19,000 Czech miles from my 2009 credit anywhere but Delta strategy. This was at best half baked at the time but I received a lot of impressive postal mail from Prague as a result. These miles were due to expire this summer due to nonactivity so I was going to throw a hotel stay at it to slowly grow to redemption levels. Last month CSA sent an email stating that terms were changing and all miles required an actual flight on their metal or the miles would be wiped from the books in May. This is not the easiest thing to do living 5,000 miles from their only hub.
The backup plan was to transfer a batch of miles to Hilton in preparation for Grand Slam 2012. I found that this option no longer exists. I am left with buying up to 25,000 miles and redeeming for a Delta roundtrip at 200 Euro, speculatively booking a intra-Europe oneway including a punitive fuel surcharge with them and hope my plans and their planes are still flying, or make a donation of my miles and hope they don't get disappeared.
In somewhat related news, I also snagged a international business class ticket from Bangkok to Prague and Paris for $268 that was coded as Czech flights with some Ethiad metal. I was greatly please to see that the purchase cleared and a ticket number issued but less so to find an email from Expedia stating the flights, but not the ticket, were cancelled by the airline. three calls and two hours on the phone with Expedia resulted in an empty apology and a "choice" of refunding the ticket or paying the extra $2000 that similar itineraries typically cost. I took the refund but did not actually have it appear for over a week.
