Originally Posted by
callmedtop
...If that's the case, why do they want people to manually calculate the award taxes and fees?
American Express can check
availability of some award classes through their own system, same as you or I can using (for example) Expert Flyer. They cannot book those classes, or see the amount of taxes and fees which the airline program would charge unless they use the AA or UA site.
This is a pilot program. I expect they will also audit many of the bookings by logging into the AA or UA site to see if the information matches the cardholders' representations. If the pilot participants lie, the feature will not be rolled out more broadly unless they can incorporate software to automatically query the airline's availability during booking.