I had a heck of a time making a change to a domestic itinerary yesterday, even though it fell into the special change policy due to the security-related baggage issues.

I'm supposed to be going out on a 3-day business trip DEN-BOS via DFW. Since I had another commitment shortly after that trip and couldn't really trust that I could get out and back on such a short trip, I wanted to delay the return until Sept 8.

Now the policy on AA.com says
I didn't want to change my origination, which is Aug 15. All I wanted to change was my return. The phone AAgent insisted that the travel policy meant that "All travel must be completed by Sept 1." When I pointed out that a) "Origination" in airline-speak means the start of your journey, and b) the logically nonsensibility of changing origination out to 9/1 but requiring a return on the very same day, she refused to budge.

I managed to get a supervisor on the line who agreed with me and made the change. But then he accidentally dropped my DFW-BOS segment so I'd never get to my destination. When I discovered that on aa.com and immediately called back, another agent refused to restore the segment even though she saw it in the PNR history, because there wasn't any remaining Q inventory. Even though it was their fault, and they'd just done that obviously mistaken change 10 minutes before, I had to push hard to get her to check with a supervisor.

Bottom line - I got the reservation fixed - but if I had simply agreed with what each agent first said, I'd be out of luck. And they absolutely won't do these changes if there is no inventory in the fare class - so good luck getting a change done on a discount fare.

Rather cheesy policy if you ask me. Very different both in actual policy and in agent tone from a very easy change I just made with CO.

I know they're stressed - but if they're going to have a policy allowing changes due to this event, it should be a reasonable policy and they should understand what it is.