Originally Posted by JonNYC

Definitely an area of confusion. While -certain- substitutions OW-> OW are explicitly allowed, a short time ago I put together this definitive list of "no fee changes" from internal AA documentation on the subject: (first 2 posts)

http://travelingbetter.vbulletin.net...no-fee-changes

And, you can see "-provided the carrier/governing carrier does not change" is clearly listed as a prerequisite for fee-free change.

Now, a) we know that many members have reported -not- being charged for this (excluding EPs who don't get charged regardless,) and, b) we know of these 2 rules that are hard and fast:

http://travelingbetter.vbulletin.net...lexible?t=4814

BUT, overall, as I mentioned, a bit of a hazy area on this. No question that both the internal AA documentation and the section AA.com you quote do -not- allow for a fee-free change involving change in governing carrier outside of the 2 rules in the link directly above (dropping a segment and substituting a segment OW-> OW.)

For a little while the confusion here was greater as it was being stated, incorrectly, by some here that any award could be changed to any other award as long as O&D remained the same, including non-OW carriers, and it took a long time to correct that misinformation.