patpatpatme

you could always show up early and try to do standby

Robt760

It's an award ticketed in "Z" inventory/fare code for you and your wife, but for your friend it is in "U", is that correct?

Simply changing a flight to a different time or date on an award ticket can be done at any time (without charge most of the time) If you know that the flight you want has the same inventory/fare code, you simply call AAdvantage to change it. Setting an alert for these in Expert Flyer is a good way to find something. Make sure to confirm that your reservation is re-ticketed, and the remainder of your itinerary is intact, including seat assignments.

Changing a flight to a different time or date, but to a different inventory/fare code requires more work for the agent, and may involve a re-deposit fee in some cases for your mileage, then a re-booking and re-issue of tickets. If you and your wife are down-gauging to "U" and you are not EXP status, expect to pay a redeposit fee of mileage. If you up-guage your friend to "Z", they are not supposed to charge the re-deposit fee, but the re-booking and re-issue of tickets still takes place.

If you really want to make the changes, I'd recommend NOT waiting until you get to the airport. The chance that something gets goofed up or held up is greater if you get an agent who is not so familiar with award bookings, some may not even do it. Save yourself some frustration, and call in (or keep calling in) until you find what you want. Verify ALL flights and seat assignments if any changes are made to your reservation. This would be my advice.

eponymous_coward

OP doesn't want that, he's on a US award with a RTW routing ("mini-rtw from USAir"), which could make an award reissue VERY expensive (at least three one way awards, possibly even more because of AA's rules like "must be published fare" and "can't transit certain regions on some awards").

I agree that showing up at the airport and asking for a redo on a complicated US award an AA gate agent in MIA is probably not all that familiar with might not be the best idea, though... if SDC works automagically, use it (and it sounds like it might if award inventory is available), otherwise... "suffer" through being apart for 12 hours or so?

Dave Noble

date/time changes should be possible as long as there is award inventory , but changing to 1st class is something that , even when US was separate, had a rule requiring that need to rebook from scratch

If availability opens in business on the same flight, should be able to all travel on same flight, but would not expect to be able to get higher class of service

As far as just getting on the earlier flight at the airport, AA does not have a policy which allows this, so unless you like sitting around airports would suggest just meeting up in London

cruisingmickey

Sorry if this is the wrong place to post this, but I did a search and couldn't find anything.

My US Airways award booking was transferred over to AA and the new record locator doesn't bring up my reservation on AA. I called up AA and they said I am fine even though it's not showing up. It's for a flight in Feb., but I booked it earlier this year.

Is anyone else having this issue? Am I right to assume everything is okay and I don't have anything to worry about?

anabolism

I have an award issued by US that I won't be flying for a few more months. It shows up in my list of AA reservations, and if I look at it I see all my flights.

What exactly do you see when you try to look at your itinerary on AA's web site? Does it show in your list of upcoming trips? If you click it, or put in the PNR and your name on the "My Trips" or "Find a Reservation" forms, what happens? If it says the reservation ca't be found, you might have the PNR wrong. If it says it is unable to display the reservation details, there might be a problem that makes AA's web site unable to display it yet it may look fine to an agent. This can happen if segments are out of order, for example.

In addition to the steps above, you can ask an agent to email the itinerary to you. Check that all your flights are listed, in the right order (also check your seat assignments).

Dave Noble

What exactly is happening?

Is it saying that the booking cannot be found or that it cannot show you the contents of the booking

If the latter , there may have been some schedule change or similar that has occurred and a phone call to AA will be able to sort out the ireegularity and then the booking will display ok

If the booking cannot be found , then either you have the PNR incorrect or there could be a problem

cruisingmickey

Thanks Dave and Anabolism. So I was given a new record locator from AA. I used the new # from AA to try to locate my US Airways flights on AA.com. I keep getting an error. I called AA and I was transferred over to their IT and they said they can see my reservation on their end and everything looks okay. They can't figure out why I can't view my reservation in my account.

This is the error I get "We are unable to retrieve your reservation with the information provided. Please verify your information and re-submit. Otherwise, if you need assistance, please contact AA.com Web Services."

Thanks for the tip anabolism. I will call again tomorrow and ask them to email me my itinerary.

some dude

That leg has passed, and I figured I would update the thread with how it went.

Went to Flagship First checkin at MIA. They said that even though there was plenty of availability in both J cabin on friend's flight and F cabin on our flight, the change could not be done for either of us (even accepting a F -> J downgrade) unless there was Z or U buckets available, which it was not. Was not offered standby.

We have done the MIA-LHR leg without problem, the LHR-CDG leg had a minor issue for myself and my wife as the BA record apparently got corrupted due to a schedule change on a later JAL leg. Tomorrow will be JAL CDG-HND in F for all three ... The first leg which our whole group will actually be in the same cabin

This trip has certainly been the most problematic I've ever done as far as confusing the phone agents with an involuntary schedule change on a complex itinerary, but you can't beat the value we got out of this trip ... London, Paris and Tokyo essentially all in F ... All for ~125k miles per person. (and we are doing Tokyo -> Hong Kong - Osaka -> Hiroshima -> Okinawa -> Tokyo on separate tickets).

The other flights are mixed awards and cash, but includes CX F HND-HKG on a 747 ... One of the memorable trips I've ever done as far as premium cabins.

Kremmen

A few days ago, I finished my last US Airways award. This marks the end of an era of fantastic value and an era of being able to grab those elusive QF awards a few days before the AAdvantage users!
125k miles on QR/AA/QF:
PER-DOH-ORD-SEA in C
SEA-PHX-LAX-MEL in F

lamphs

Canceled two award flights booked with USDM miles last Sunday. In one case, miles were re-deposited immediately. In the other case, not so, after 6 calendar days. I have 4 new award flights on hold - holds expire tomorrow. This evening, I called AA to inquire as to the redeposit status. After a long hold time, the agent explained that I needed to go through the website to cancel and she gave me my ticket number to do so (and she apologized that I had not been told that before).

She stayed on the line while I went through the process. Well, the ticket was canceled, but in 'pending review' status. I asked what that meant, and she said 'that is a good sign, but it could still take days'.

I do not have days. While she was able to extend the hold of one of my 4 awards, I am still short the number of miles due to be re-deposited.

Has anyone else run into this? Any suggestions for direction? Thanks much.

anabolism

This is really an AA issue, unrelated to the fact that you booked originally via US. That said, agents do have the ability to manually force awards to be redeposited, but it's a bit of work (they need to dig out the certificate numbers from the tickets). Agents also have the ability to keep an award from expiring in exceptional circumstances such as this. Also, AAdvantage Customer Service can force a redeposit and also can allow an account to go negative. So, you have three options that would work: call back and ask the agent to manually process the award redeposit; call back and ask the agent to stop the award from expiring while the redeposit is pending; call AAdvantage Customer Service and ask them to force the deposit or to allow your account to go negative.