Originally Posted by
jcore
Using the last of my AA miles, I booked 2 R/T CMH (via DFW) to HND in Jan-2021 first class seats Outbound with return business class. We liked "only 2 rows" in First Class (fewer people). Still not sure about flying, but booked it anyway. I noticed the plane changed and our seats are now in Business class. I asked about (a) if the aircraft is replaced with a larger plane, would we be automatically rebooked back in first class, (b) would we be refunded the miles difference or (c) now I see other flights currently with first class service, been nice if they offered to re-book as we're flexible on departure cities. Thoughts?
I'm Gold. Flights are AA175/AA176. Aircraft was 777-300ER and now is 772-777.
Not sure about COVID, travel restrictions, self-quarantine in Japan, etc, we may not go but at least AA should of called or emailed that our first class seats have been downgraded. Granted the food and beverage probably the same but heck, it took a lifetime of saving miles for this splurge. I'll call Advantage desk but half thinking just to wait and if we don't go, assume we could get a full refund/redeposit without penalties because of the downgrade. Any thoughts appreciated.
1. see above, wait until at least november (why change it now only to have to change again with inevitable schedule changes)
2. if there is first class availability on other AA flights (even if not award availability), your odds of getting those seats are pretty good when you call and ask -- there's no system that automatically offers alternative flights to you though, in a situation like this
3. i would think twice about spending a "life savings" of miles on covid-time travel. unless things are back to semi-normal, the experience will likely be, shall we say, a let down.
4. have you checked to make sure that similar seats aren't available now at lower mileage rates? if they are, you could cancel & redeposit your current awards (obviously no fee, given the downgrade if not because of covid policies generally), and then buy new cheaper tickets. i mention this only because your OP makes it sound like you paid a lot for these tickets which should only be 160,000 roundtrip per passenger if you got saver tickets. maybe that's a lot of miles to some, but given the memberships in your FT profile, it wouldn't seem like 320,000 miles would be a "life savings" of miles.