Originally Posted by swag

Yes, AA is within their CoC to cancel conflicting holds, but they could certainly make some big improvements in how it's done.
1. Detect at time of the 2nd booking and prevent it then, rather than canceling later. Assuming the AAdvantage number is on both bookings, this shouldn't be hard. No need to wait for a big slow overnight computer batch run.
2. Rather than block the second booking, offer the customer the ability to cancel the first one when the second one is made, as part of the same transaction.