I am sure many people know this, but having experienced it for the first time in a long time I thought it worth reminding people. (Mods, please don't bury this in some other 3,000-post-long thread that nobody is going to read. I think this is kinda important.)

We all know that when booking flights that include a partner, often times after you pay the reservation appears as "on request" rather than "ticketed" on aa.com. When this happens, the reservation typically will go from "on request" to "ticketed" in a matter of hours. Sometimes faster, sometimes slower. But I would say that if a reservation has been "on request" for more than several hours, if usually is worth calling AA just to confirm that everything is in order.

In the past couple of weeks, I purchased two round-the-world itineraries, which of course involves multiple partners. When I paid for the first round-the-world, it came back as "ticketed" very quickly, perhaps even right away. (I have learned from my recent experiences that when you are on the phone with the round-the-world folks booking your flights, they typically will get confirmation of the partner flights availability while you're still on the phone with them. And in fact, even before you've purchased your itinerary -- you can't purchase it right away because the AA rate desk needs time to price it out for you -- you can see the partner record locator on your reservation on aa.com.)

With the second reservation, however, I had all sorts of issues requiring four different phone calls to the round-the-world desk. It took a while, but I figured out that QR was canceling some of my flights because they were dupes of an existing ticketed reservation I had. My plan was to price out the round-the-world, and if I decided to purchase it, to then cancel the existing reservation. But QR -- I assume automatically and not manually -- kept canceling out some of my round-the-world flights, so the folks at AA were not able to price my reservation. Once I figured this out (no offense to the folks at AA, but I had to figure out the problem on my own), the AA agent allowed my to book the same flights on made up dates so as not to conflict with my existing reservation. Once I did this, AA was able to price out the reservation -- they did this in about 24 hours, which is the norm for round-the-world tickets -- and I got back on the phone with the round-the-world folks, who were very helpful in moving the flights to the dates I wanted and then immediately canceling my existing reservation before QR was able to cancel the new reservation. I then paid for the itinerary right away,

Throughout that day, I kept checking aa.com and seeing the reservation being shown as "on request" and not as "ticketed." In addition to my wondering whether this was indicative of a problem with the booking, I could not choose seats on the partner airlines until it had been ticketed. Finally, after waiting all day with the ticket still being "on request" and concerned that the round-the-world desk would close shorty (they close at 10:30pm CT), I decided to call. I explained to the agent that I was calling just to be sure there was no problem. He looked at the reservation and saw no problem -- at least none that he told me about -- but said he wanted to check with the rate desk. As often is the case when the round-the-world fold have to speak to the rate desk it can take some time, and at one point the agent came back on the line just to tell me they were still working on it, but when he finally came back on he told me I was now ticketed. And as soon as I went back aa.com I was able to confirm that.

So I never learned exactly what the problem was, but I am absolutely convinced that had I not called the reservation would have hung in limbo. I share this story not to criticize AA at all -- all of the agents who helped me were very helpful, and of course the round-the-world tickets are pretty wildly complicated -- but simply to remind people that if you have a reservation that is "on request," don't be shy about calling AA and inquiring about it.