<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by HK-UMICH:
question for christep: so for the open date tkt: is that means as long as during the ticketing time there is a direct flight in the system (regardless of time and date), I can ticket it as 1 segment (1 coupon). and by the time I fly, no matter due to cancellation/schedule change/seasonal reason, the direct flight disappeared, AA should honor the flight coupon even by means of connections? Is the "exception" only valid if the flight get cancelled or basically I can use more than 1 segment as long as it is a valid connection?
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To be honest I don't think I've ever directly experienced this exact issue. I was really commenting on what I think you would be able to get a reasonable check-in agent to accept (particularly with an Emerald card).
On your specific example, my feeling is that they would probably let you go on the connecting flights on a standby basis, but if there was a direct flight within a reasonable time (e.g. 24 hours) they would force you to take it if they were tight for space on the connections. This probably only applies on US domestic routings - I can't imagine you'd get away with it on international.
Does anyone have any first hand experience of this type of situation?