Update. Called AAdvantage today and was lucky to get a Supervisor/Trainer who was also taking overflow calls and had him look at the ticketed rez. Explained that all onward connections on AY beyond AY 22 were returning unconfirmed even though the X award inventory continues to be wide open on the onward AY flights. I told him people were beginning to think I sounded like I was off my Prozac when I explained to them this was happening... but being a trainer himself, he had previously seen something similar so was intrigued enough to test swapping out BA 799 for AY 1337 (without cancelling BA 799) in the ticketed itinerary. Sure enough, he got AY 1337 to confirm until... it did a 180. Then he tried to sell it as Revenue... and THAT's when we realized that dat darn bot's got its knickers on tighter than us humans and won't give it up for all the myrrh in Batavia. Cuz when he booked AY 1337 as connecting Rev space, it would STILL not confirm, although obviously revenue is completely open to sell. And as expected, when he tried to sell AY 1337 separately either as Award or Revenue in a standalone record, it was fine.

So basically nothing new to report, but it confirmed to us that 1) No dice even after ticketing... and even more surprisingly 2) even Rev space is verboten on the AY-AY connection.

Observation #2 ) is indeed interesting -- that a carrier would block even its own Revenue constructions for connections in any onward market -- or at least the three markets we checked CDG, LHR and DEL, so I would say MOST markets.

The agent took my phone # and said he would look into this further and call me if he found a workaround (about as likely as espying unicorns frolicking in my backyard) and use the rez as a case study for his next training session.