I am travelling on one of the few remaining 037 tickets. My original booking was made in January (itinerary included AA, JL and CX flights), and I paid USDM to make a change in March (moved entirely to CX flights and added a stopover in HKG, so I knew I had to do it prior to the transition to AA). Final trip is BOS-HKG-KIX (destination), then KIX-HKG (overnight) -BOS, all segments in F. USDM issued me a new 037 ticket number in March, while the original US PNR remained the same.
When I plug in the US PNR into the AA website, it spits out an AA PNR with ticket status of "Cancelled". But I think this must be referring to the original itinerary which included an AA domestic leg, since plugging the new 037 e-ticket number into Saudia all looks good. I also got the CX PNR and it looks good too.
My trip is coming up in a few weeks, and I would like to change my KIX-HKG to one of the earlier flights that same day. I thought I could do this without a change fee now that we have moved over to AA award rules. However, when I called AA to inquire about this, they initially told me that my ticket was cancelled and there was nothing they could do. When I fed them the new ticket number, they told me they couldn't help me since it was an 037 ticket and so they transferred me over to USDM.
Once I got through to USDM, I was told that the KIX-HKG flights earlier that day are flown by 2-class aircraft instead of 3-class, and hence no F award availability. Fine, book me into J or Y. However, I was told that since it would require a downgrade from F, it was not possible to make that change whilst keeping the rest of the ticket intact. My only option was to cancel/redeposit the whole ticket ($150 fee) and re-book it pending CX re-releasing the F award inventory. Yeah, right.
My question for all of you is, is there any use to HUCA? Is the agent correct or misinformed about the downgrade of one segment being impossible without redepositing and rebooking the entire ticket? And a second question, if AA tells me they can't work with this ticket and instead transfers me to USDM, does this mean USDM's old rules apply? Or do they now have leeway to use AA rules? Mostly I want to know if I need to pay the $150 change fee for a simple date or time change, and also if I can make a change to my return itinerary after flying the outbound.
Thanks in advance for any advice you can share.