thehawk75

I swear some time ago this didn't used to be the case, but, sometime in the last few months AA changed the ability to properly filter the award ticket results to a specific airport.

Case in point:

Trying to book my family on a mileSAAver business class from EWR to LAX. Date is somewhat flexible, but airports are not. Anyone from New York area would know that JFK is not a 'convenient' airport to get to if you are staying in NJ and want to fly out of EWR.

I do not believe the 'award booking' start screen ever had the 'and airports within xx miles' drop down, however, in the case of booking from NYC, it was pretty easy to mimic that feature by selecting NYC as airport code. If one wanted a specific airport, such as EWR, then that's what you'd put. Now it seems by default, and something you can't change, it's automatically putting all airports within 60 miles of the airport you wanted (just a guess because HPN is also coming up in this specific search).

You are unable to de-select any of these airports you don't want until you get to the 'select flights' screen. This is after the calendar view screen ('select dates'), where it shows the availability of the various award fares for each date.

So, how it's playing out for this attempted booking. I filter for business mileSAAver, direct flight (which I can do on the 'select dates') screen, and then see that 10/10 does have mileSAAvers available. I'm thinking 'great, let's book it', and lo-and-behold when you click on continue and go to the 'select flights' screen, I can see there are NOT any mileSAAver business class seats out of EWR. Only JFK in this case has the direct flight mileSAAver business.

Thus, if you want to fly out of a specific airport, this renders the 'dates flexible' option kind of useless, because you have to go and select each date independently and only then can you de-select the airports you don't want -- a rather cumbersome job. You'll never know if the flight you want is 'really' available until you click on that date anyway.

Perhaps it was always like this and I never encountered this issue until a couple of months ago, but, I had been using the feature for quite a while without complaints up until that time.

At any rate, in this specific case since I'm only looking within a couple weeks window, so, it's not 'too' much effort to click onto each date and find out if the flights out the airport I want really exist. However, in other cases when trying to plan a overseas vacation some time in the future, and I have 'dates flexible' that span several months, well it makes AA.com completely unusable for this.

Perhaps I can call AA and have them search for the flights I want, but, I really prefer to do things online when I can as it's far more convenient to me (and besides, I'd prefer to avoid the phone booking fee as well).

I am tempted to write a suggestion to AA about giving back (assuming it always existed) to filter for specific airports before having to click all the way to the 'select flights' screen (whether they pay attention to my suggestion of course is their prerogative), but, kind of curious if I'm just the lone wolf howling in the wind about this, or, if there are others who share the same thoughts?


To the moderators: I had thought about putting this post into the 'AA.com Glitch' thread, but, since this is not a 'glitch', and instead an obvious intended design, I wasn't sure if it would belong there. Feel free to move this post there if that's where it belongs.

imagineertobe

So, you're trying to get seats on AA119? That's flown on a 737, so the premium product is marketed as First. This might be one source of your frustration.

I did notice that award searches added area airports, but for me this was always a good thing. I can see how for your situation it might not be. Probably best to write a kind, concise email to AA web services requesting this option.

mvoight

I gotta agree. AFAIK, there are NO business class seats from EWR to LAX, so that search is incorrect to start with, and will only show JFK to LAX for nonstop business class. I agree, my preference for award travel is to see what is available in the area. I am not going to aavoid an award ticket to Rome in business class simply because it is SFO-ORD-FCO instead of SJC-ORD-FCO. YMMV

thehawk75

That is simply not true.

10/6 shows a mileSAAver business/first available on Flt 119 for 25,000 miles.

Semantics I guess. I probably should have not have used the exclusive term 'business' in my op. Nonetheless, the 25,000 mileSAAver premium cabin seats can be found on the EWR->LAX direct route. FWIW, there is no such thing as a 'business only' award (mileSAAver or AAnytime). It's 'economy', 'business/first', and 'first'. I used the term 'business' (sans '/first') to save a few characters.

Also note, searching for a 'first' mileSAAver or AAnytime will never yield a result for EWR->LAX. A 'business/first' search will.

At any rate, I do not believe my method of searching was incorrect to start with.

Perhaps you are correct, in the example you describe above. However, as you said, YMMV. For flying the family home from NJ, where wife will be in tow with toddlers, going through a couple of tunnels and over a couple bridges to get through NYC is not going to be the favored option, premium cabin awaiting or not.

But, I really didn't want to get into a debate about 'why wouldn't you use another airport in the area'. We can go around in circles on this one all day.

I was just more perplexed why one can't choose their specific airports on the onset of the award search. As was suggested, I will likely write AA on this, and as additionally suggested in a kindly and concise e-mail (but that goes without saying). At any rate, the mail will obviously more concise my original post here, in which I was sort of thinking aloud on this I guess, and trying to see if anyone also found this lack of feature cumbersome -- I guess I am more in the minority on this one as evidenced by the replies so far.

imagineertobe

Okay, so to clarify the First/Business distinction, the product you're looking for, i.e., the cabin near the front on a EWR-LAX 738, is going to be called First by American. The debate as to what AA should call it is worthy of another thread (searching will likely find an existing one).

Now, for the NYC-LAX market, aa.com will show you these seats in an oddly-named "Business/First" award level because AA considers the First seats/service on a 738 to be more similar to the Business seats/service on a 762 than to the First seats/service on the same aircraft. So they lump 738 F awards and 762 J awards together and make another category, "First" awards, for the 762 F product.

Despite how it looks on aa.com, award inventory for 738 F seats comes from the Z bucket, just as it does for 762 F and any other "First" product that American flies; 762 J inventory comes from the U bucket. This is why mvoight and I said there are no Business seats on AA 119. Hopefully that clarifies our comments a little bit. I didn't mean to criticize your searching skills, just to highlight that the buckets are a little confusing for this market, as noted above.

Now, regarding airport inclusion, I don't think either of us had then intention of suggesting that you shouldn't be able to limit which airports are shown on the availability calendar, we just said that we (personally) prefer searches to be more inclusive than not. Again, I see why your situation would warrant airport exclusion.

I am not privy to aa.com's to-do list, but I would suspect that given the many parts of the website that have been simply ported from the old and are awaiting redesign, a request such as yours would not receive top priority (which is not to belittle its merit). In the meantime, you can use a service like ExpertFlyer.com to get around aa.com's shortfalls; subscriptions start at 4.99/month and there's a 5-day free trial offer. I am not affiliated with the company, just a happy customer.

All the best in getting those award tickets!

SAN-man

What's most interesting to me about this thread is that I could easily see it being written completely the opposite:

"I really want to take my family to LAX on vacation, but there's never award availability from EWR. I really wish aa.com would allow me to see all the NYC area airports at once, so that I don't have to search EWR, then another search for JFK, then LGA. Would be great if I could also filter out airports that don't make sense for me, like HPN."

Point being, it's not always easy to design a website that meets the needs of every customer every time. Others have posted in this thread that they find the feature valuable.

In this instance, to solve the OPs specific problem, I think imagineertobe has great suggestions. If you want self help, use EF, or if not, just call. You can always have the agent search for you, and when you find the day/time you like, go onto the website to book, thus avoiding the phone fee.

acf573

I search from JFK or LGA typically, and it's definitely shown me all-NYC results for award searches for the past couple years at least.

That said, there definitely seem to be some changes. HPN in the results is new I think (so maybe they expanded the search radius) and the airport filter is new as well I believe. When I search LAX, historically that did not show alternative airports, but now it brings up SNA/ONT/BUR as well.

thehawk75

Didn't quote everything to save some space, but, wanted to say thanks for the clarification! I hope I didn't come across as being too defensive, I was just merely pointing out that my method of searching was accurate and would yield the results I wanted, despite the fact I wasn't using the technically correct terminology in my description in the thread. At any rate, class of service aside, I could have been referring to any class of service, the same airport inclusion occurs when searching.


I fully agree with you, the airport inclusion is a great feature, if you like it. It'd be nice to turn it off as well

I actually did write them a suggestion/comment letter. They replied to me within 4 hours, noting my gold status and thanking me for the suggestion. It was nice that it wasn't a template reply. In all honesty, I didn't expect anything more (actually this was more than I expected). I even mentioned in my original letter that whether they implemented the change or not would not affect my decision to use AA, but, that if this is something they could address at some point, I and perhaps others would find it useful.

At any rate, thanks again for your informative posts

Right...and here we go again...

One thing that perplexes me, is why the implication that I would like to sacrifice airport inclusion feature? That is not what I was saying.

I admit that I do not know what the existing code on aa.com looks like, but, I'm certain if the day comes that they can make it so you can restrict the airport to exactly the one you specified, I am sure that they wouldn't have to discard the ability of the site to include the other area airports in order to do this.

At any rate, to state once again, I fully agree with all posts here that the local area airport inclusion is useful. I just add that being able to restrict it to one airport would also be useful. Why the continued debate on having one versus the other and not both?

Yes, the aa.com web designers have other priorities, and I was never in a tirade or anything against the site, I was merely sharing an opinion that the site would be 'even better' if you could restrict to a specific when searching for award travel (while in calendar view).

For the record, I will still continue to fly with AA, and still continue to book flights on aa.com. Merely pointing out something which I find a peculiar flaw (for lack of a better term) in the design does not mean I'm going to boycott the company or anything like that.

I've never tried Expert Flyer before, but, thanks for the suggestion, perhaps this would be useful.

RogerD408

I'm confused... Today when I pull up award travel between SFO & LAX it shows the area airports next to the flight details with check boxes. Unchecking undesired airports removed those from the list. Does this not show up for you? It was about the middle of the screen to the left of the flight listings.

Sounds like the best of both worlds here. Inclusion by default, exclusion by selection.

thehawk75

Right...

There was no question that you could chose the airports 'after' you've selected the date of travel.