During the past month I have worked with agents at the Silver Preferred award reservation desk to set up flights in conjunction with an European cruise vacation for my family next year. Had 80+ K miles in my, my wife's and son's DM accounts to set up business class awards. Made the outbound reservations in June PHX-ORD-FRA-ZRH (the only routing with three seats in C on LH) [US1/LH491/LH3720]. The agent had to check with inventory to clear the US flights in F. Yesterday I finalized the return LHR-LAX-PHX [NZ1/US2836]. When I called to ticket the flights today (the agent said to wait 24 hours for NZ to confirm the seats) I was informed that instead of 80K miles per ticket I would have to use 125K miles because the first leg was in F...therefore I would have to fork over first class award mileage.

I calmly (on the advice of my dear wife) informed the agent that I was told on multiple occasions that this routing would only require an 80K business award. I then asked to speak with a supervisor. Before being placed on hold for the agent to contact her supervisor I asked her "If the earlier agents told me I needed a first class award for this booking....why would I insist in sitting in business class on the trans-Atlantic leg(s) instead of first class?" There was a long pause before being the agent told me that she would talk to her supervisor.

After an hour on hold (I really don't want to go to Brussels or Aruba after listening to all the canned messages while I was on hold) with brief reassurances from time to time that the agent and supervisor was working on it, I finally got the flights booked and ticketed at the 80K business award level. ^ It took that long to "load" fares that would accommodate the booking and to change all three reservations. In the end, all was well and I thanked the agent and supervisor for their assistance.

I never had trouble with award bookings on US to Europe in 2003 and 2004. The family flew in first class to the hubs (CLT and PHL) before going across the Atlantic in Envoy Class. Last year I had no trouble using my AAdvantage miles to book business class tickets on Swiss to Europe.

Is this something new with the merged US or was the itinerary just a bit too complex for the computers & agents to handle? Has anyone else experienced this form of award “sticker shock” or "award inflation?"