• How do I change or cancel my reservation?
Before you even get there, AA offers customers a number of ways to insure that tickets are booked correctly. The first is the Hold Reservation feature of AA.com, which allows customers to place a reservation on hold at the prevailing price for at least 24 hours (until midnight of the following day), giving time to confirm correct dates, times, and other travel plans. Note that advance purchase requirements of fare rules still apply, so prices of held reservations may increase when those requirements are not met. Occasionally, prices of held reservations will increase incorrectly when attempting to complete purchase, and this can be rectified by calling AA Web Services (+1 800-222-2377).
The second chance to catch an incorrect reservation after purchase is to call AA before its status changes from ‘Purchased’ to ‘Ticketed’ on AA.com and request that the reservation be canceled or changed.
The third chance to catch an incorrect reservation after purchase is to call AA within 24 hours of ticketing. AA allows its agents to correct ‘mistakes’ to reservations within this timeframe without charging a change fee, although cancellations and refunds are not allowed at this point. However, these corrections cannot be made to reservations that require paper tickets to be issued (certain rail codeshares).
After that, changes or cancellations to non-refundable fares will require payment of a change fee, which is published in the fare rule (usually $150 for domestic fares, $250-275 for international fares). Fare rules usually grant fee waivers for death of a passenger or traveling companion (domestic or international), but no longer for serious illness of a passenger or traveling companion. Residual value from canceled tickets is recorded by ticket number and must be applied to the purchase of a new ticket for the same passenger for travel within one year of the original ticketing date. Any remaining value will be refunded in the form of a voucher. Notably, Award Upgrades that have already cleared and for which copays have already been paid will also remain associated with the ticket number and can be applied to the new ticket, upgrade inventory permitting, without additional copays or mileage redeposit fees.
Finally, note that AA does intermittently make systemwide schedule changes, and does allow passengers booked on affected flights to make free changes to their itineraries, including cancellation for a full refund. Some agents may cite a minimum time change to allow this (≈30 min, unless a Minimum Connecting Time is violated), in which case, the customer can call back and try a different agent.
AA.com:
Refunds |
Refunds FAQ |
Schedule Change - Rule 240/80
FT:
Ticket errors, corrections and "24 hour ticket mistake window"
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Protection for AA schedule changes - Free flight changes / refunds (consolidated)
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Award Travel - Recourse for schedule / equipment changes (consolidated)
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Have to cancel a flight, what happens now?