Pizzaman

Traveling IAD-DFW-DEN tomorrow. Original flights I purchased were much higher priced than normal (assume Thanksgiving hangover) and later in the day than I needed to travel. However, I wasn't willing to pay $1200 one-way (the lowest fare available when I booked) to travel first thing in the morning.

I was poking around last night, and popped on to see if the fares had dropped. The early morning flight was the same price as the later flight I had booked, but in a different fare bucket (I booked M, L was available at exactly the same price). I would have had to stand by for the earliest DFW-DEN flight I could take, as the lower fare was only available on flight 1493 out of IAD. Flight 1241 out of DFW showed tighter inventory on EF, and was pricing higher when combined with 1493. So I was asking him to change me to the earlier flight out of IAD, with the hopes that I could standby on 1241 or get them to change at the airport.

EXP agent stated that fare was not available. I asked him if it was a fare bucket problem, and he said, "No. I see L inventory, but it's priced over $1000. The fare you're seeing is not available."

"But I can book it online."

"No, you can't."

"Yes, I can."

"Well, then go ahead."

"But the system won't let me have two tickets under the same name to the same place on the same day."

"Sir. That's not the reason you can't book it. It's because the fare isn't available. Our system has newer information than you can pull up on aa.com"

So, I pulled up another browser, selected the early morning flights (1493 & 487), and put it on hold under my wife's name. I gave him the record locator and asked him to look at it.

He said he needed to put me on hold for a few minutes while he "swapped the inventory". When he came back on, he said he had changed me to the earlier flights. He also said my return flights had dropped in price, so my change fee was mostly offset.

When I went to pull up the record again, instead of having 1493/487 (the cheaper flight pair at ~$553 and the flights I was holding under my wife's name), he had put me on my desired flights (1493/1241), which were pricing out at ~$1200.

Is this just the agent being lazy? I've never encountered an issue where I can see inventory and book it while an agent says they can't. And, how did I get onto 1241 for the lower fare price? I didn't think EXP had this much flexibility to move things.

Don't get me wrong. I'm happy to be on the flights I want. I'm just curious if this was some sort of system glitch, or some bizarre EXP powers I've never seen exhibited.

ESpen36

Wirelessly posted (Apple iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7C144 Safari/528.16)

I would have said, "thank you for the help," and hung up. Then, I would have called back and spoken to someody else.

SFO777

Always good advice.

Short hair Francis

I think you had a lazy agent but I had a aa.com error, last night too so anything is possible. Tried to book a K fare on YYZ-MIA, EF showed K1 but aa.com showed Y only, yikes!

Pizzaman

Agree that it's good advice, and I was just about ready to when I went and held the other itinerary. But I was surprised he was able to put me into inventory that hadn't priced reasonably for weeks. I know EXP agents have leeway for restoring old reservations/change reservations to fix mistakes, etc. Just didn't know how far that line stretched and how he was able to get me the seat at that price.

mvoight

Wouldn't this have worked?

1. Using AA.COM, Hold desired flights using your own name without your AA number
2 Using AA.COM, cancel your original flights
3. Call AA to apply the credit from your original flight, less change fee, to the reservation on hold
4. At some point, add your AA to your new reservation

AAir_head

Yes, this works. Exactly what I have done in the past, though in my case the original fare was refundable, so no change fee. Still worth it if the fare diff - change fee is a net positive.

cheers!

Pizzaman

Definitely would have gone that route if the agent could not have helped. Still not sure how he was able to put me into that inventory if it wasn't available.

AAir_head

IIRC, they can request RM move inventory from one fare bucket into another desired fare bucket for you--the request may or may not be granted (similarly to requesting release of inventory to clear an eVIP). Sounds like that was what he did while you were on hold.

I've also had them do this for me in the past when I requested they price the itinerary in a specific fare bucket to see if it would make a difference for a last-minute change--in this case, though, I was re-pricing a fairly expensive non-refundable TATL fare to a domestic fare due to a family emergency. If they hadn't done this, I'd have cancelled the original fare and applied the credit to the new itinerary, which I did not want to do as a matter of convenience (I said as much, and the EXP desk was very accomodating).

cheers!

funtotravel

I must have been on 1241 with you from DFW - DEN - assuming you were on the Monday flight! It was an interesting ending to an otherwise uneventful flight. Do you know if it was a confirmed fuel leak or no leak at all?

Goin-2-AA

While possible in the 90s I think 'system glitch' is passe these days. You got a rookie agent. Even a brain surgeon has a first day on the job so try again.

Pizzaman

I never heard. But, the fire engines did freak out a few people around me. Where were you sitting?

acf573

I've had this happen before on web-only fares. I had to put it on hold before the phone agent could do anything. It's possible the web services agents can see them...