NYCtraveler

My availability has come and gone on flights I wanted.....American Airlines agents are unwilling to even touch reservations for changes....citing 5 day window. We are on 14 days of NO advanced access for FF awards....Why has there been no announcement or uproar/groundswell about this?

A Cathay flight showed up today on a BA award I was looking at.....I was flabbergasted....The other One World Airlines have this EXCEPT American?

Cmon guys....please get with this!!!!

NYC

Happy

As I understand the issue AA has, they can see the award availability, but they cannot ticket it (as in the normal way) because CX system would not automatically accept the request AA sends. The workaround currently involved manual processing thru the liaison persons on both sides... It appears that AA has to manually request the seats and CX has to manually "code" the seat as redeemed by AA... That might be the reason(s) why AA only accept NEW award booking within 5 days of travel. For EXISTING award it is a different matter altogether - the existing award is already shown in BOTH airlines system therefore there might not be a communication issue. I was able to ticket a held reservation within an hour despite the travel date was beyond 5 days probably because the reservation had been confirmed by CX on 02/15 and again on 02/20, automatically, with the Amadeus PNR. The agent had to ask supervisor's OK to ticket it on 02/25 for a 03/07 travel when the 5 days rule was already in effect but obviously the internal system showed the reservation as HK therefore the supervisor OKed it and e-tickets came within an hour.

HK means Holds Confirmed, as described below:

For existing reservation
One issue with Cathay Pacific Airways (CX) segments still remains. Some segments (very random) will change from HK (Holds Confirmed) to either US (Unable to sell) or UC (Unable to confirm). When booking CX prime flights, please ignore and retrieve the record until you see CX record locators. Then IR the record once or twice more just to be sure that the segment status has not changed. If it has, please offer our customers other options. Thank you.

Update 1100CT/24FEB
Cathay Pacific (CX) booking problems have not yet been resolved. Please follow these booking guidelines:

New Bookings:
New bookings are only accepted for immediate travel (at least one segment must be 5 days or less)
Provided the CX Record Locator has been returned on all segments, contact RSD as an additional verification is required to verify the booking is confirmed in CX's new system
If segments are truly HK, RSD will document the PNR and you may set up ticketing
If segments are UC/US, PNR cannot be set up for ticketing. Alternate flights must be selected. Please repeat steps to contact RSD for verification.

Existing Bookings:
Should a customer request a change in their itinerary (date/time/cities):
book the desired segment (new travel must be within 5 days)
ER the record to ensure the HK segment tag and CX Record Locator are received
Contact RSD to verify the segment is confirmed in CX's new system
Cancel the original segment that customer no longer wants
Set up for Reissue or Reinstate/Claim

Customers wishing to book travel for outside 5 days, please apologize and explain that CX is experiencing technical issues that we hope to resolve shortly. As all award travel on other partners using AAdvantage miles as a form of payment, must be booked by American Airlines and they must call us back at a later time. Please do not refer the customer to Cathay Pacific Airways for AA award booking and ticketing. Thank you for your patience while Cathay Pacific works on this issue.


The up-to-date info is here:

http://www.travelingbetter.com/forum...?t=5181&page=2

MikeFly

As another data point, I just spoke to AS and they cannot book any new tickets at all - not even the 5day window that AA is allowing.

Short hair Francis

The AS problem also dates back to the Amadeus changes.
AS had to make a note I was changing the date
The original date of travel was Feb 19 and all they did then wass notations into the record locator that I need change and call back later to input new flights.

moeman

I couldn't agree more, I am trying to book a trip to Singapore and don't want to book my flight between Singapore and Malayasia or my flights within Malaysia. My cost will go up because Cathay can't get their act together.

MightyTravels

Same here - I was eying a great reward in January (!) and of course availability has gone away now. BA seems to have no issues making the bookings - only AA/AS have this bureaucratic policy. 2 weeks and no tickets at all - almost seems like they are happy CX dropped out to sell more AA redemptions...

Dr. HFH

Anyne considered the possibility that this is intentional by CX to favor their own frequent flyers (AM/MPC) at the expense of AAdvantage members with regard to award availability? Remember, it's not that the system can't make award bookings; it's that they're restricting award bookings to no more than five days in advance.

jmw2323

i think they are restricting to 5 days as they have to call to check availability. Keeping it to 5 days or less to not cause a backlog of phone calls.

Dr. HFH

Exactly. The CX system can handle it. (I was at BKK yesterday and the CX ticketing office made some changes to an award rezzie for two days from now while I waited.) If it's just the interface between CX and AA systems, I find it hard to believe that that problem takes weeks to fix.

daniellam

Just speculation here:

It looks like CX may have been overzealous in setting the security level in Amadeus for their award availability. As a result, other airlines such as AA, AS etc. are having problems booking it.

Other carriers that use Amadeus (BA, IB, ,QF, LH etc.) allow travel agents who use Sabre and other GDS to "sell" seats in their award inventories (even if the availability is not displayed, travel agents can do a "long sell" entry to access the inventory on these carriers even if they can't ticket it afterwards).

Since CX has traditionally prevented this from occurring (but setting a security level so that only certain "Pseudos" or "Office IDs" at AA, AS, other partner carriers etc. can access their award inventory) in their old system, they might have over applied the security settings in Amadeus, thus preventing some if not all of the AA Sabre "Pseudos" from accessing their award inventory.

Since this is speculation only, there may be other connectivity issues that AA and AS may be having with CX which I may not be aware of.

Note: Although AA and AS both use Sabre, as with other airline systems, their level of "connectivity" with CX is typically lower ("Answerback") than that of the travel agent partition of Sabre ("Direct Connect Availability").

daniellam

Duplicate

rmc1

Still same message as of 10:45 AM EST

Doesn't really matter for me as had to have wife book her trip without the extension on the end since I cannot make it over to Asia. Too bad that CX's ineptitude caused me to miss my vacation this year. I suppose there is still hope but then I have to pay $450 change fee for wife's flight (assuming fare has not changed). Thanks for the lousy service CX and AA!!

Happy

This post might very well confirm your speculation - CX system seems unable to hold an initially "confirmed" an AAdv booking - status promptly changed from "confirmed" to "unable to sell" during the reservation process.

http://www.travelingbetter.com/forum...0&postcount=14

I am in the same boat as the poster - trying to convert a U ticket to a Z but at the end it failed. Meanwhile, the availability disappeared. Sigh.

I am sure AA is as frustrating as we are but it cannot force CX to fix this ASAP.

sxchan

Looks like CX issue is now resolved!

pogonation

Can confirm this as well. Just added some CX legs to a ticket on hold ^