Originally Posted by
Lux Flyer
Found out the other morning this is incredibly easy to do. I started a reservation on my phone app, was distracted after selecting a seat but before paying, then eventually made the reservation via my laptop on the AA.com website. Went back to my phone later to see I had 2 reservations, the one I paid for on my PC and one "on hold" from what I had started earlier (never requested the hold for 24 hour feature) with a unique/different record locator. Interestingly the "on hold" one didn't show up when I'm logged into AA.com's website. It eventually disappeared on its own a few hours later, but I was surprised how easily and unintentionally you can create a duplicate reservation request. Granted I wasn't holding the duplicate for days at a time like the Hayes case, but seems pretty bad on AA's end that you can tie up inventory like that.
Exactly. I've had it happen myself, noticed it, and have said to myself, gosh I better make sure I really cancel this thing so they know I'm not trying to defraud them lol. You can go to your reservation list and hit "remove," and I've noticed the inventory literally change immediately after doing so. Scary that their IT allows this.
I suspect they must really just be going after the most egregious examples, though. I looked at Hayes again, and AA contended he had a "flurry of activity" that included "28 bookings using fictitious names, while omitting his AAdvantage account number... he created a fictitious 'placeholder' name, and entered information regarding the type of booking, date of birth, gender, and a contact telephone number, while avoiding the optional frequent flyer number. American contends that this process created passenger name records which placed 45 upgraded seats out of inventory for a total of 41 hours in the few days before the flight's departure."
Btw, just down the page from that...
"American further asserts that American's website architecture is not at fault, because it provides two ways for a passenger to easily access a flight's dynamic seatmap without going through a laborious, and fictitious, booking process."
So, that will be AA's claim... our website isn't at fault. The person booking did something abnormal and unreasonable... 45 upgraded seats in 41 hours? You bet that raises red flags.
I'd be worried myself because I frequently book last minute tickets and often cancel some of those, so reading some of these stories you'd say, gosh I hope I'm not in their crosshairs someday, but when you truly look at who they hunt down, it seems to be the truly biggest, most egregious offenders.