Folks, a very competent agent tonight told me the stopover in Hong Kong is shortened to only 7 days since last week, from the previous 14 days. He said it was "Regional Restriction" imposed by CX because of the current Covid situation. He said the system would not let it go thru if was more than 7 days. I haven't tried to duplicate this online.

Anyway in the afternoon I found a pair of LAX-HKG on Nov 30th and was able to book it online, thinking I would wait till more dates become bookable then to change HKG to be a stopover when and if some availability showing up. I already missed a pair BOS-HKG Oct 26th that was available last night but gone today. To my surprise, the AS system labored for a very long time but did not error out, just gave me a complete BLANK screen. However when I hovered the mouse over the URL, the URL said Thank you for your payment, your reservation is confirmed. Wow! So I did a Refresh of the screen, and it brought up the reservation with a Print button - I could print the receipt which showed both PNRs with ticket numbers. CX site showed the booking with "confirmed" but NO ticket numbers in the booking...

Then an initial AS email came which only has AS PNR but WITHOUT ANY ITINERARY INFORMATION. 30+ min later another AS Confirmation email came with the booking details. Yet, the "View Reservation" button in the email only brought up a screen that the reservation details cannot be displayed online. Please call AS to get more information.

Later I decided to check the US gateway cities again using QF for the calendar and then using BA to check the dates shown on QF had J seats - this is much quicker than click open QF's details which about 50%of the time were irrelevant, i.e. not CX availability. I started the calendar from August onward. SFO, LAX, JFK are all very sad but BOS shows quite some availability between late August to Mid Sept. These were not there last night. Newly released sometime today. That is much better than the Nov 30th date LAX-HKG I booked online earlier.

Called the 1-800-426-0333 number a poster kindly shared end of Dec that this number had little wait time and had call back option. The wait time was 59 min but it did have call back option so I used that. The call back agent was a general, inexperienced agent who thankfully realized her shortcoming. She promptly suggested to transfer me to the "international desk". The transfer took almost a min before the other end picked up and I was praying the line would not be disconnected. Very lucky to get a very competent agent at the "international desk". I explained to him what I wanted to do - replaced the current booking to a new itinerary, BOS-HKG-AUS, or BOS-HKG-TYO depending on the second leg's availability. That was when he informed me the 7 days stopover restriction put in place since last week.

I gave him 2 Sept dates that both QF and BA showed availability. Then I went to BA to double check but found the first Sept date was no more - it was because he immediately grabbed the seats on the first targeted TPAC date, then checked ALL 3 AU gateways on a period of 5 to 7 days after the HKG arrival. That is the sure sign of a very competent agent, secured the longhaul leg first before checking the rest. Sadly most dates only had Y seats, not even PE, Zero J. Same is true with the second targeted date. Then we changed to check availability HKG-TYO which has a much better showing. So we decided to book BOS-HKG-NRT instead. He also commented that it was a long time to Sept - the stopover restriction may change, availability may improve, there would be chances to improve the itinerary between now and Sept, just kept checking possibilities periodically.

Unlike AA, AS can roll over the previous tickets taxes to the new tickets, only charge the difference. AA on the other hand would refund the previous tickets taxes in full, then charge the new tickets anew.

When I mentioned AS only showed the the very abbreviated info of the reservation in Trips, but would give a message to call AS instead of showing the details of the booking when you pressed the Detail button, he said it might be still in queue, that the CX bookings have some glitches in recent weeks, and the higher levels of "international dept" wanted to go over all new bookings multiple times... It will take some time for the reservation shows up in full on AS website. He then gave me the new ticket numbers. AS Confirmation Email came about 40 min after we finished the call. All information looks in order, new tickets replaced old tickets, additional payment on the taxes, both AS and CX PNRs. But the reservation is still a no show on AS site, just like many others who have active reservations.

I most want to see CX shows ticket numbers. Right now it does not but seats are shown as "Confirmed". Next step is to hunt for return flights!