Many frequent travelers participate in airline loyalty programs to earn and redeem miles for flights, upgrades, car rental deals, and other cost-saving measures and services.
But the recent incidents with American Airlines (AAL) AAdvantage accounts include a couple of high-profile travel writers with their own experiences on the topic.
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From these accounts, there appears to be at least anecdotal evidence that episodes of AAdvantage account fraud occur with some frequency.
Gary Leff of the View from the wing The blog wrote on April 20 that it had corresponded with about a dozen readers in the past two weeks who said they had miles stolen from their American Airlines accounts.
When an account is hacked, passengers must obtain a new AAdvantage number. Victims of theft should also report the crime to the police.
The theft reporting process can present its own set of problematic issues.
American Airlines AAdvantage account holders react to events
Leff, after speaking about what he called “an absolute eruption” of recent incidents he has been following, noticed something curious in a phone call he had with an American Airlines agent on April 19.
“I… found that the agent had to verify a lot more information than usual before issuing the ticket,” Leff wrote. “Something systematic seems to have happened that led to this.”
The boy with the points Clint Henderson wrote on April 19 who had woken up one recent morning and discovered in an email that he had been the victim of a serious fraud attack on his own AAdvantage account.
“Someone had used my miles the night before to book two Avis rentals (CAR) via Rocket”, Henderson wrote. “Of my more than 400,000 AAdvantage miles accumulated, there were just over 20,000 miles left in my account.”
After some digging, Henderson was told that American Airlines considered the 449,000 stolen miles to be worth $13,260.25.
He also discovered that he had to file a police report and send it to American in PDF format.
Henderson explained that his frustration increased even more when he realized he would then have to deal with the New York City Police Department (NYPD).
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American Airlines Police Report Requirement Causes More Stress
After going to a local police station in New York City, Henderson filled out the required report.
Then they told him he couldn't have a copy. He explained to police that American Airlines requires him to send them a copy to get his miles back.
“They told me in no uncertain terms that there was nothing they could do and they didn't even give me a report number,” Henderson wrote. “They told me I would have to go to a special office at police headquarters in lower Manhattan at some point if I wanted to apply for paperwork. I left the station very, very frustrated.”
However, the next day, Henderson reported that he received a call from another NYPD detective who told him that he would send him a copy of the police report after all.
“I'm not sure why they told me I couldn't get a copy, and neither could she,” Henderson wrote.
“I ended up with all my miles restored. Overall, it only took me a week to figure it out. That's pretty quick, but I'm not loving all the obstacles I had to overcome.”
At the time of publication, American Airlines had not responded to TheStreet's request for comment.
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