Originally Posted by
enpremiere
Given that you can cancel any revenue ticket today without a penalty and that will automatically generate a flight credit, you could self-service if the occasion arises and either use the "change flight" feature (easier but not always doable via the aa.com property) or cancel and apply the automatically generated flight credit towards the new ticket.
This would be true for AA tickets exUSA, but AFAIK some foreign carriers are still selling deeply discounted tickets (including for business class) where the fare rules say that all value is lost if the ticket is not flown exactly as written: No changes whatsoever. IIRC BA had/has many such fares.
Moreover, a USA carrier is more likely to make exceptions for good reasons, especially for their own high-tier elites, but overseas the expectation seems to be that passengers will buy travel insurance, so one is unlikely to get much sympathy (or a customer service gesture) from a foreign airline.
Some people use miles for an award ticket if they must do last minute travel for a funeral or arrange such travel for others.