flyinghome

I have 6 seats on an upcoming trip from ORD to FRA. 3 are paid seats and 3 are miles award seats. I had two more people ask yesterday if they can come with. Here is my question. One on my awards tickets is for my son. He has his own FF account. The two new folks have never flown before and do not have a FF account.
Can I change my son to a paid ticket so he gets the miles and put the new people on an award ticket. What fees are involved if i can do it.
I called EXP desk and she was unable to answer my question and I did not have tme to wait for her research. She is calling me back later.

bdemaria

Per AA.com "Once award tickets are issued they cannot be transferred"

Therefore, you'd have to pay the fee to redeposit the miles into your account (100 for PLT for Milesaaver Awards- don't know if its different for EXP) and then book a new award ticket for the new pax and buy a new tick for your son.

flyinghome

Anyone know the change fee for EXP it is a 90K miles business class seat?

tazi

This wouldn't be a change, it would be a redeposit for which there is no fee for EXP. Then you would need to book a flight for your son and hope the award availability is still there for your friends to book.

SCChris

Remember, just because you may cancel an award ticket does not mean that ticket will return to award inventory. I would be very, very careful in doing it.

tom911

Sure you're not confusing that with 1K? It's been a while since I've cancelled an AA award ticket, but I didn't think EXP's were exempt from the redeposit fee.

jragosta

It's worse than that.

I had a similar situation a year or two ago. I had 'purchased' tickets for myself and family with miles. Then, it turned out that I had to do business at the same time, so I canceled my award ticket and purchased a ticket on the same flights. (or maybe it was the other way - I had bought a ticket and then canceled it to redeem an award ticket - I can't remember the details).

For the next year, I was mysteriously flagged every time I checked in at my home airport and the TA had to call Dallas to get approval to get me on the flight. Every single check in took at least 10 minutes longer than it had to. AA first blamed TSA, but when TSA said it wasn't them, AA finally admitted that I was blacklisted. They accused me of using my Aadvantage miles to manipulate the system to ensure award availability (not sure what they were suggesting because it had never occurred to me.

So I put up with a year's worth of major inconvenience (and a threat to terminate my Aadvantage account) for something similar to what you're planning to try. So I'd suggest you make sure it's OK with AA before you do it.

jragosta

This is incorrect. EXPs also pay a redeposit fee ($100 for the first ticket on a record and $25 for each extra ticket on the same record).

monsrt

Do you have enough miles to buy the award ticket for your friend first? If you do, get the award ticket THEN cancel your son's ticket and buy him the new ticket. Like the other poster said, canceling an award ticket does not mean that one will be available again to book so be careful how you do it. You can put it on hold first also. You will have to pay the redeposit fee.

stria4

I did a redeposit a few months ago and they did not charge me any fees...

jragosta

They made a mistake - either on yours or mine. I'm pretty sure yours was the error.

I just redeposited 5 tickets last week. $100 for the first ticket, $25 for each additional.

millionmiler

They absolutely made a mistake to your benefit.

flyinghome

Here are what AA did for me in this case. There is a normal charge of $100 to redeposit the miles. They have agreed to waive the fee in this case because I was buying 2 additional tickets. I now have 8 seats and had no extra fees. Thank you AA for giving me a break.

Blumie

Yeah, but did they add your name to the TSA watch list?

nrr

If he were going to take the same route at some future time, couldn't he rebook the award ticket to new dates (assuming availability) and not be charged any fee.