Originally Posted by
handspring088
In the immediate instance that writing about, I did put a reservation on hold (using Aadvantage miles). I was told that the hold is not helpful for BE awards because there are restrictions on BE awards that do not apply to Aadvantage awards. For example, I was able to book a MileSaaver Business Award that had three segments, but was told that because the middle segment was between two domestic cities, connecting to the international flight, that it was invalid as a BE redemption.
That is complete nonsense (what the agent was telling you), I would have definitely HUCA. My last int'l BE award had exactly that, 4 segments with an all domestic flight flight in the middle, and of course I was able to ticket it with no problem (RDU-CLT-BNA-LAX-SYD) using a BE award.
While I won't put much of anything past AA these days, it makes zero sense as to why AA would have a stricter set of routing requirements for a BE awards, and these "requirements" again sound like complete nonsense and/or agents misunderstanding certain rules, etc.