Well i didn't think so, but in the case of this particular mileage award ticket it WAS a standby ticket. And that's why I'm bemused and seeking advice on how to avoid similar scenarios.

Here's a brief chronology:

1. August: LOT Polish Airlines ticket bought on the Miles&More website using miles and a small amount of cash.

2. Flight is tomorrow. Today my wife attempted to check in and the Miles&More website displayed a message along the lines of 'this is a standby ticket, check in at airport'. However, the site still allowed her to print a boarding pass but with no seat number on it, just 'SBY' in the seat number field.

3. A call to LOT confirmed this information: it was a standby ticket and she would not be able to board until after everyone with a confirmed seat number had boarded, and only if there are any spare seats.

My guess is that the plane is perhaps sold out or overbooked, and she is suffering either from having an award ticket or leaving it late to check in, or a combination of both. But like I said I'm new to using M&M points and am simply guessing on the basis of no knowledge.

In the meantime she has booked separate tickets as it's imperative she gets to Poland, but I'd like to avoid issues like this in future!

Pretty strange as I have booked plenty of flights with M&M and they where all confirmed tickets. However none of the flights where with LOT.

I would call or write to M&M and ask for clarification.

#3 - Thanks for the suggestion. She has now written asking for clarification and whether any reclaim of points would be possible.

Agree with above.

Miles tickets are not standby.

Is it possible that it was only a reservation?

Write and ask for clarification.

#5 Thanks. I'm not sure what you mean by "only a reservation"? She received a PNR and a ticket number beginning with 220, the confirmation email looked like any other I've ever seen, the miles were taken from our award miles pool, and her credit card was charged for the small amount due in cash.

Just to add something I forgot in #2: when she called LOT's customer service line asking for an explanation, the agent said that "it is like a staff ticket".

Anyway, it seems like this is not a standard situation so hopefully M&M will answer the message asking for clarification.

Please let us know if you find out anything. I never had an issue with MM tickets but never booked LOT.

OK I have no experience with LOT but you say you paid some cash for the flight. So is it possible that what you did is actually buy a standby ticket then used points to reduce the cash price of that ticket? Hence it’s not really an award booking, you just used points to offset part of the cost of the ticket you purchased?

#8 - Well inadvertent user error is of course always possible, hence the part in brackets in my post title :-)

But I don't think your hypothesis is what happened, certainly not by design. All I know is that I sent to the M&M website and followed the instructions for booking an award ticket.

I think the cash part of the transaction was to pay for taxes, but I'm not 100% sure. The cash was a small % of the entire cost so I didn't pay much attention to it when booking.

#7 - Sure, I'll report back if I ever get to the bottom of it.

LOT normally doesn't sell standby tickets, neither for cash or points, so this is very weird.

I wonder whether it may simply be the case of overbooking and bad wording on the website?