The most fortuitus mistake made by an airline or loyalty program to benefit you?

[Must...Fly!]

pretty sure the best i've had is having a red e-deal upgrade to a bucket earning full Y status credits . Not much but a free 20 SCs.

At the time I was saying I'd gladly trade them for not having to be delayed 9 hours in PER, sitting on the plane for 3 hours before takeoff and missing my connecting flight to WLG, resulting in having to spend an hour in a hopeless search for my bag, followed by another hour of searching for a shuttle which I was incorrectly informed would take me to my hotel, eventually gaining a taxi voucher from more helpful QF staff and then spending another hour in the taxi queue at SYD...

But little did I know then that those extra 20 SC would push me over the line to PS

 

[Isochronous]

op-up to J on LAX-MEL and received J points and SCs.

 

[nonpop]

Had QF code share flights on AA metal in the US (J/F class). Got the the airport in ORD ready to fly to LAX on AA then to Oz via QF.
The ORD to LAX flight on AA was cancelled. So I had to fly via various hops to get to LAX all in domestic F and no extra charge - a pain but had the time to connect with my original LAX to Oz flight.

Bonus #1: So picked up a heaps of extra points and SCs with the bunny hop from ORD to LAX via DFW
Bonus #2: The original QF (on AA metal) flight never seemed to cancel and eneded up collecting SCs for the original (never flown) flight ... and those yummy SCs.

What was strange was even a few hours before I left for ORD, my flight status never changed. Only when I got to the airport did the AA agent explain it had been cancelled and no I had not been re-booked. It was just fortunate I showed up early.

 

[munitalP]

~1998/1999 the bosses PA used to collect BP's and send them to Air NZ for processing. One time after my boss returned from a RTW F as well as a lot of F LOFAP (UA on NZ codeshare from memory) as well as my particularly busy month, the BP's were sent in*. A week or so later my status (which was close to Gold) jumped from Silver Koru Club to Gold Elite. I held it im my own right after that but all the same, excellent score

*(The bosses BP's were credited to my account)

 

[openseat]

Not so much a mistake but an overbooked plane, BA9 from BKK to SYD.

I had an economy seat and was prepared myself for it, with no expectations of upgrade, also knowing that the seat I had, 29K, was one of the better ones in Y (thank you OWE seat pre-selection for no cost)

At check in at BKK I was upgraded to WT+, which of course is nice in the mid-J configuration, well nice for WT+.

When I got to the gate there was a real back up of people and staff running around with boarding passes. By the time I got to have my boarding pass scanned, I got the beep and was asked to stand aside. The agent then came and gave me a boarding pass for 64B. I was pretty happy!

 

[meloz]

Amex

Great times. Driving 200 metres between service stations after $6 purchases. I had works around the country requiring approx 300 litres of fuel a night and batteries for torches. At least 12 transactions a day. Never to be seen again. My employees thought I was crazy filling so many jerry cans at so many servo's each afternoon for 3 months.

Meloz

 

[smit0847]

Nothing very exciting - got given double the number of comp lounge passes that I was supposed to when signing up for a CC.

Wish I had been around here in the days of that great Amex challenge - I could have really cleaned up!

 

[NM]

I once had a DONE4 booking and the TA had booked my AA domestic flights into Y instead of F per the fare rules. I queried the booking and pointed out the rule that AA 2-class services book into A class. She apologised for the mistake and changed the AA flights to A class, including changing the AA codeshare operated by CX from LAX to HGK - somehow I forgot to tell her about her second mistake Not sure how, but it got through the ticketing process (paper ticket back then) and my 1K seat reservation stuck.

 

[vitagen]

I got an extra 10sc thanks to Jetstar! Syd-Mel gave me 20sc instead of 10! Yeah baby! Scoreeeee

 

[oz_mark]

Credits for flights I've never stepped foot on.

 

[Princess Fiona]

I got an extra 10sc thanks to Jetstar! Syd-Mel gave me 20sc instead of 10! Yeah baby! Scoreeeee

I would regard that as probably adequate compensation for having to fly JQ in the first place :mrgreen:

 

[ashleyn]

Applied for and got points for US car hire that had gone missing then some 9 months later, got them again from the original transaction.

 

[lano]

Not an airline mistake, but still a nice score:
My coworker gained $1800 worth of Qantas credit in his account after the company we were working for cancelled a a hitch of work after already buying the tickets under his name. The credit for the cancelled tickets went into his account, not back to the company

We lost out in the end as the credit was less than what we would have earned, but it was better than nothing