I had a 7 day hold on AA for a biz class international award ticket on Etihad. The hold was supposed to expire in 2 days (I checked carefully, and the email I have indicates the expiry time too). I was looking to purchase today and to my surprise it doesn't show up in my account.

I tried looking it up with the record locator and it says 'cancelled'. No notification to me at all.

What could have happened? Is it possible this was phantom inventory on Etihad and they just took it away? Or some glitch in the AA <-> Etihad hold process? I

I'm wondering if it makes sense to call AA to ask if they can reinstate the ticket. The problem is that since the hold was not ticketed, I don't have an e-ticket number, and I suspect the CSR won't be able to shed any light on what happened merely by locator number. Also, since the original award was on another airline (and award space on Etihad doesn't show up on that date right now), even a helpful CSR won't be able to reinstate the ticket. I suppose they could offer a flight on AA metal between the city pair for the same mileage as the original hold. (although AA's award mileage for that link on its metal right now is 4 times what I had the hold for, so I'm dubious they would offer that).

So would it just be a waste of my time to contact a CSR and likely spend a lot of time while they research the issue and tell me there's nothing to be done?

Thanks for any insight!