AirTran and Wendy’s have a promotion going on that will award a free ticket on an AirTran flight. You need to collect 32 special promotional cups to collect each ticket, with 128  cups being the maximum to be used for awards. It is causing some extreme behavior including dumpster diving in New York City.

More than a month ago, I told you about AirTran’s promotion with Wendy’s where customers could earn a free one-way ticket for every 32 soda cups they collect from the restaurant. Apparently, the promotion has become so irresistible to some bargain hunters that they’re willing to dig through the trash to find the discarded promotional cups. Philadelphia-area nanny Danielle tells The Christian Science Monitor that she and a friend spent two hours digging through the dumpsters outside two New York Wendy’s restaurants searching for the cups, which can be redeemed for AirTran frequent-flier points. Danielle, who asked the paper to withhold her full name to make sure AirTran would honor her claim, estimates they collected 330 cups –- or enough for two round-trip tickets each. “It’s pretty disgusting work, especially when you grab a handful of chewed meat,” she says. “But it’s about the only way I can afford to see my family [in San Luis Obispo, Calif.].”

The craze doesn’t stop there –- the cups and the flight coupons have even shown up on eBay and Craigslist. The Christian Science Monitor says sellers typically ask between $150 to $200 for 128 flight coupons –- the maximum the promotion allows per person. That may seem to be a steep price for 128 cups, but when compared to the cost of buying two $300 tickets from New York to the Bahamas, for example, the price is right for some. “A free product makes money at whatever price it sells,” Brooke Szczepanski, a financial planner from Hayes, Va., who collects the cups from the trash and sells them  64 at a time on Craigslist for $100 per set. She says she has collected 2,600 cups so far. AirTran spokesman Tad Hutcheson says the company did anticipate a black market emerging for the cups, but adds: “(W)hen we looked at the pros and cons of it, the cost of getting exposure for AirTran outweighed the bad.”  via USA Today