Delta Took my SkyMiles! Should They Have? How Does this Affect You?

Over the May 1 weekend, I had a very hectic schedule, thanks to some family emergencies. Here’s the short of my plan:

• Friday: Fly from Baltimore to Atlanta on Delta on a paid ticket for the Delta Jet Drag
• Saturday: Fly from Atlanta to La Guardia on American on a paid ticket, return that afternoon from La Guardia to Atlanta on an American paid ticket.
• Sunday: Fly from Atlanta to Baltimore, via Charlotte on a US Airways paid ticket.

My Saturday morning flight from Atlanta to La Guardia ended up getting canceled at the airport thanks to a mechanical issue. After quickly running to the nearby Admiral’s Club, I was quickly re-booked on a nearby leaving Delta plane to La Guardia. After several minutes of calling folks and tapping away into her computer, the friendly club agent had me all set, and I was on my way. I ran to the gate, making it on within 5 minutes of door closing.

In the air, I messaged Delta to find out the reservation reference number for this new ticket, and had them apply my SkyMiles number. My attempt was to receive both the AAdvantage miles as original routing credit through American, and now Delta SkyMiles for this new journey. Funny enough, several days later I saw the Delta flight post into my account. It wasn’t many miles, of course, but free is free…

I was looking in my Delta account the other day and found something that surprised me.

My miles had disappeared!

My May 1 trip from BWI-ATL posted, however the May 2 journey from Atlanta to La Guardia had been removed, and there was no record of it anywhere, even after calling Delta. Admittedly, I don’t login to my Delta account every week to check these kinds of things, so I’m not sure when it was removed. After numerous chats with Delta on Twitter, there was nothing they could do, as they couldn’t find me on the plane I told them was on, nor, obviously, could I find the ticket number. The boarding pass from that flight is probably long gone in a dumpster, too. The reservation number used has since expired and re-cycled, too.

This is interesting, though. Delta must have realized that I didn’t actually pay them for a ticket and the miles they were awarding me weren’t based upon any spend I had given. Now, technically, American is in some way paying them for that seat, however that’s at a contracted separate rate, which wouldn’t earn miles anyway. So, it seems like Delta is really keeping track of who is earning their miles and under what circumstances. Of course Delta had to get back their couple hundred miles from Atlanta to New York…

That said, I haven’t pushed the issue further as personally I don’t feel entitled to these mies, for the very reasons I noted above. My interest is in Delta’s review process, clearly catching the mistake somewhere.

Here’s a word of advice for you if this scenario were to happen to you: Keep the boarding pass, as there’s always a chance they might be able to retroactive the miles if you were that desperate. Don’t assume you’ll earn the miles, though.

What would you have done in this scenario? Has this ever happened to you?