AA Booking Troubles

 
Old Jan 17, 2014, 7:17 am
  #1  
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AA Booking Troubles

I am preparing to take my family of four to Bali on miles (our first award flight using AA miles). When we booked over the phone, the agent said something like, "and of course the $25 fee is waived since you can't book this online." She helped us select seats for each leg and took my credit card for the taxes and fees.

This was Sunday. On Tuesday, I received an e-mail to call them. Found out that Cathay Pacific didn't have one of the seats AA thought they had, or it was booked incorrectly. (It had showed up in BA search and I had it on hold for a few days before purchasing.) My daughter was split off from our reservation and we were left waiting to see if Cathay would approve giving her an award seat. We all lost our seat selections.

A few days later, it came back approved and we reselected seats. The agent told us that we will need to personally call JAL and Cathay to see if we can get the seats we selected.

Is this normally how it goes? It feels quite pieced together and I'm wondering if we will actually have seats when we arrive at the airport.

While we were waiting to hear back, my husband hatched the plan that we should change our dates for another five days out when availability looks like it is better. He got into that idea and now wants me to switch. Can I do that? It seems like too much of a mess!
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Old Jan 17, 2014, 7:28 am
  #2  
 
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What AA told you is correct. They sometimes have access to partner seat maps but that's not always the case. Your best bet is to get the JAL an CX confirmation numbers and select seats on their websites.

If you'd like to change the dates, you can certainly do that but if you don't hold status with AA, there will be a change fee involved and since we're talking about 4 seats, you'd have to pay 4 change fees. So, keep that in mind. Good Luck!
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Old Jan 17, 2014, 8:02 am
  #3  
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OP is all set now, but there are several suggestions which apply generally:

1. Nothing is confirmed until you have an e-ticket confirmation for all segments of an itinerary. This is not an email confirming a reservation, it is an actual e-ticket confirmation (you will see an e-ticket # as opposed to a record locator for each segment).

2. Other carriers have 72 hours to confirm positive space. This may be antiquated in this day and age, but they do have it. Here, OP's AA reservation on Cathay initially failed, but Cathay apparently agreed to open up award space. This is all a series of manual operations and takes time, particularly given time differences.

3. Now that OP is ticketed, pay close attention to your bookings on each carrier's website. Do not rely on AA for non-AA segments. This is especially true of award bookings because reroutes can be very hard, particularly for 4 people, when changes in schedule occur.

Many of the trip points are not IT failures, they are intentional choke points maintained by carriers to require manual intervention.
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Old Jan 17, 2014, 10:20 am
  #4  
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"If you'd like to change the dates, you can certainly do that but if you don't hold status with AA, there will be a change fee involved and since we're talking about 4 seats, you'd have to pay 4 change fees."

This is incorrect. AA does not charge any AAdvantage member -- regardless of status -- to change dates or times on award travel.

And the OP was lucky to have the $25 telephone-ticketing fee waived. It is supposed to be charged when booking award travel on carriers for which aa.com is incapable of making an award booking.
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Old Jan 17, 2014, 11:55 am
  #5  
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$25 fee

The $25 fee was actually charged I think... I am not 100% sure because I haven't received an e-mail with any flight numbers yet or receipt. I should check my cc bill to see.

It's good to hear that we could change dates without penalty, if we decide to go that route.

So I need to get the flight numbers for the 3 segments on AA partners, call up those partners, and double check the seats? Then should I also call them periodically to check that the flight times haven't changed? Is there an easier way to make sure I get notified if flight times change on partners?

Thanks!
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Old Jan 17, 2014, 12:45 pm
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Originally Posted by hennaLisa
The $25 fee was actually charged I think... I am not 100% sure because I haven't received an e-mail with any flight numbers yet or receipt. I should check my cc bill to see.

It's good to hear that we could change dates without penalty, if we decide to go that route.

So I need to get the flight numbers for the 3 segments on AA partners, call up those partners, and double check the seats? Then should I also call them periodically to check that the flight times haven't changed? Is there an easier way to make sure I get notified if flight times change on partners?

Thanks!
If there is a $25 fee charged when they said there would not be one, I'd submit a complaint online. They are pretty good about refunding fees like this when they said they would not charge it (but did accidentally). For the segments on partners, personally I would call AA and ask for the record locators for those segments. CX will have a different locator than AA. Once you have those, you can look them up on the CX website periodically and make sure they still exist.
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Old Jan 17, 2014, 1:16 pm
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Originally Posted by guv1976
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"If you'd like to change the dates, you can certainly do that but if you don't hold status with AA, there will be a change fee involved and since we're talking about 4 seats, you'd have to pay 4 change fees."

This is incorrect. AA does not charge any AAdvantage member -- regardless of status -- to change dates or times on award travel.

And the OP was lucky to have the $25 telephone-ticketing fee waived. It is supposed to be charged when booking award travel on carriers for which aa.com is incapable of making an award booking.
Whereas this is generally true and I'm sorry about my wording, there is an exception:

Changes to your outbound travel date, resulting in a departure within 21 days -

A $75 USD award processing charge will apply for a confirmed change to the date on an AAdvantage MileSAAver and AAnytime award ticket if the change results in a new outbound travel date that is within 21 days of the original booking date (waived for AAdvantage Executive PlatinumAAdvantage Platinum and AAdvantage Gold members using miles from their account).

Since the OP mentioned that there was a consideration about a date change, I thought I'd throw it out there.
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Old Jan 17, 2014, 2:29 pm
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hmm...

My daughter's ticket still didn't go through! I only know because I got a confirmation for the other three of us and not her. I called up AA and am in the process of purchasing it a 3rd time. I'm wondering if I really should be trying switching dates. But this has gotten so complicated that I'm honestly a little scared to switch for fear that it might go just as badly or worse. We have segments on AA, JAL, and Cathay. Cathay is the one that is rejecting it, first because they said the award seat wasn't available (even though I had it on hold) and then because they said the taxes were wrong.
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Old Jan 17, 2014, 2:51 pm
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Originally Posted by Phoenixtinct
Originally Posted by guv1976
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"If you'd like to change the dates, you can certainly do that but if you don't hold status with AA, there will be a change fee involved and since we're talking about 4 seats, you'd have to pay 4 change fees."

This is incorrect. AA does not charge any AAdvantage member -- regardless of status -- to change dates or times on award travel.

And the OP was lucky to have the $25 telephone-ticketing fee waived. It is supposed to be charged when booking award travel on carriers for which aa.com is incapable of making an award booking.
Whereas this is generally true and I'm sorry about my wording, there is an exception:

Changes to your outbound travel date, resulting in a departure within 21 days -

A $75 USD award processing charge will apply for a confirmed change to the date on an AAdvantage MileSAAver and AAnytime award ticket if the change results in a new outbound travel date that is within 21 days of the original booking date (waived for AAdvantage Executive PlatinumAAdvantage Platinum and AAdvantage Gold members using miles from their account).

Since the OP mentioned that there was a consideration about a date change, I thought I'd throw it out there.
Yes, but that $75 charge only applies if the new date is within 21 days of the original ticketing date. If the OP books an award today for travel on March 1, for example, the date can later be changed to March 6 with no fee, even if the change is made less than 21 days prior to March 6.
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Old Jan 17, 2014, 2:52 pm
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1. You can't hold a seat on another carrier. AA may show it, but it's not out of Cathay's inventory until Cathay specifically reserves it and it's paid for (with miles, currency or whatever).

2. I would get your ducks in a row with all 4 of you confirmed with e-tickets to cover all segments for all travelers, before tinkering with anything. As you are finding out, this is a ponderous process with a lot to go wrong.
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Old Jan 17, 2014, 3:01 pm
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Originally Posted by Often1
1. You can't hold a seat on another carrier. AA may show it, but it's not out of Cathay's inventory until Cathay specifically reserves it and it's paid for (with miles, currency or whatever).

2. I would get your ducks in a row with all 4 of you confirmed with e-tickets to cover all segments for all travelers, before tinkering with anything. As you are finding out, this is a ponderous process with a lot to go wrong.
It is patently false that an AAdvantage member cannot hold an award seat on a partner carrier until the seat is paid for. With the exception of AA partner LAN (which does not permit such holds) and IB (which only permits a one-day hold), AAdvantage award reservations on AA and its other partners can be held for five days, as long as the reservation is made sufficiently far in advance (I think at least 14 or 21 days out).

There is the separate issue of IT problems/phantom availability which might lead to the inability to actually get a partner-award seat ticketed. But that's a very different issue.
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Old Jan 17, 2014, 8:12 pm
  #12  
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As this pertains to the pre-merger American Airlines, it is being moved to that forum.

As noted in the Welcome to the New American Airlines Forum! PLEASE READ BEFORE POSTING, questions and information pertaining to the existing AA or US operations should go in those forums as it will be quite some time before the two entities operate as a single airline.

Your understanding is appreciated.

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