The bingo game started at the beginning of the year. Our daughter Laury let us know that she and her family would be renting a house in Hilton Head, South Carolina for a week in June. Barb and I politely suggested that if they upgraded to a slightly larger house we would be happy to join them. A first-time visit to Hilton Head for us, some extra babysitters for them. Perfect plan!

The kids agreed and located the perfect house. Barb and I booked seats on the same XYZ Airline non-stop flight to Savannah as the kids. So far so good.

We hit a bump on the runway in February. While Barb and I were visiting several transplanted Chicagoans in the Phoenix area, Laury messaged us that the details for our Savannah flight had changed. Our voyage now included a 30-minute layover and plane change en route. Laury felt this was undoable with a toddler and an infant, even with grandparent assistance.

After some back and forth, we all decided it made sense to drive instead of fly. Laury’s family’s tickets had been booked with XYZ miles, so a refund was easy for them. Not so simple for us, since we had paid for our tickets. As it was the airline that had initiated the flight changes, XYZ agreed to let us cancel without penalty, but would only give us an airline credit, not a cash refund. So there we were with a decent-sized credit for an airline that we rarely used,

But then an opportunity to use the credit knocked on our theater door. We learned that A Beautiful Noise, the Neil Diamond bio-play, would be having its worldwide debut in Boston over the summer. Since no Broadway dates had been announced, we decided this was our best chance to see the new play, based on the life of Barb’s musical idol. We bought theater tickets, booked a hotel for a weekend in June, and used our airline credits for the flight to Bean Town (or is it Beantown?)

But wouldn’t you know it, shortly after everything was booked and in place the producers announced that the New York run of A Beautiful Noise would begin in the fall. Boston is nice, but Broadway is Broadway so we decided to skip the Cradle of Liberty and plan a November anniversary (our 44th) weekend in the Big Apple. We put our Boston theater tickets up for sale on StubHub, and converted our airline flight from Boston Logan to NYC LaGuardia.

Confused yet? To recap, after two major itinerary changes, we were fairly even with the airline. But then something good happened. Barb and I both received a message from the airline telling us that the airline was revamping its credits program and each of us had a full travel credit remaining. We felt as if we had passed go and collected $200. The only kicker was the credit had to be used for travel beginning no later than January 5, 2023.

Our schedule is fairly packed between now and the end of the year so we didn’t see any way to add a new trip. But then we realized that on January 4th we are scheduled to fly to Florida for a week-long visit with some snowbird friends. And THOSE tickets on United Airlines were booked with miles, so they could be easily canceled and our miles refunded.

We spent an hour or so toggling between two computers, switching our flights to use our Airline XYZ travel credits. We reclaimed our United miles and high-fived each other for a job well done. As far as we can figure out, we just got a free flight to Florida.

Maybe from now on, I won’t bitch so much at XYZ Airlines!

---