Ick

I'm at home today, since I'm not feeling well. I decided to make use of my time here and look at travel information.One of the things I was counting on to cut down on the cost of my travel to Argentina was the fact that I had a large pool of frequent flyer miles. I was planning to use them for at least one of our tickets. I logged in online to look at my account today, and all but 500 of my miles are gone. Expired. Dammit. So there goes that idea. There's no way that I can accumulate enough miles in the next 12 or so months to equal what I had. To get a free ticket from here to Buenos Aires, I'd need at least 40,000 miles. I had more than that. Now I have a paltry 500. I can buy miles, but only 25,000 per calendar year, and 25,000 miles costs $625. So I'm stuck.I have an aunt and uncle who used to work in the airline industry and could get reduced or free airfare. They're both retired, so I don't know if they can still take advantage of that, especially with the state of the industry. I guess it's worth a shot to ask. It would be better than paying close to $5000 for 3 tickets.I suppose it's better that I realised my miles are gone now, instead of in a few months when I actually went to purchase the tickets. At least I have some time to explore my alternatives. Any ideas?