Originally Posted by
golfer20
Am seeing great QR U availability in March 2023. If I book the flight, then QR (a) reschedules or (b) cancels, am I in trouble unless there is another flight with U availability?
I feel like it's a catch 22, you need to book early to get the award space before other people, but QR could also make life difficult.
It's pretty much guaranteed that whenever you book extremely early, there will be multiple schedule changes. It's not usually a problem. For example, let's say you have an award itinerary with two domestic AA flights connecting to two QR flights. If QR changes the schedule of the flight that connects to an AA flight that makes the connection inconvenient, as long as the change is more than an hour, AA will move you to different flights even if there is no award availability (as long as there's space in your ticketed cabin). This also applies if the change is an hour or less but creates a misconnect (connection time violates minimum connection time [MCT] or is 24 hours or more).
Where it can be a problem is if the connecting flights are on another carrier and there's no award availability on alternate flights and AA doesn't have flights that can be substituted. In this situation, AA will ask QR to move you to a flight with a valid connection. If QR isn't willing, then there is a problem.