Originally Posted by mtofell

I've done a lot of cancelling and changing of flights over the years and the official policy from AS is 7 days but I've found it never takes nearly that long. Ironically, a cancelation after the 24-hour window is usually instant. I recently canceled a couple flights within the 24-hour window and it took a couple days. In all cases I have the money routed to my AS "wallet". So, if you are okay with using the wallet you might wait until past the 24-hours.