UAAAPeter

This happened quite a bit but seems less common these days. But be careful. A couple of times I got to the airport and it said "purchased" which I thought meant "ticketed". Well I had 45 minutes on a domestic flight and it was a bit iffy but they got it ticketed. A second time (you would have thought I had learned but really I didn't get what had happened the first time,) it was an international flight. Also with 45 minutes to go. That's when it pays to personally know the check-in agents and have been nice to them. He got into a major fight on the phone with the international desk in Dallas who wanted to charge me a full Y. Well I boarded the flight with a very strange boarding pass for the first leg only - basically with no ticket - and by the time I got to Dallas it was all sorted out. I was pretty irritated with the whole booking process to say the least. You think you know the sytem inside out and then you find you don't. American's web site for ticketing is horrible compared to United. On UA you can go in and see the fare bases, taxes, ticket #s - you name it. AA's you can't and I can't understand why. All you have is the wretched email and if you buy as many tickets as I do you never link the emails to the tickets you bought. They can arrive hours, or days or weeks after purchase. Oh yes, this all happened to me because of a VIP upgrade that got the system stuck. I have often seen that, but now know to chase it up. American have excellent computer systems in general, but this is a real glitch.