JPG3392

AA is offering LGA-DCA flights on US after arrival at JFK on a flight from Europe (on AB, in my case). At one point I had such an award (NUE-TXL-JFK; LGA-DCA) booked for October 2014 travel, though I have now changed (on my own initiative) to a more convenient AA JFK-DCA flight which was not available for award travel at the time of initial booking. Last week I saw MUC-DUS-JFK; LGA-DCA award flights in June 2015 listed on the AA website, though I did not attempt a booking.

Dave Noble

International - Domestic connections are not suppressed. TXL-NYC-DCA is ok . It is only Domestic-Domestic connections that show as suppressed

JonNYC

You mention "last week", this was "maintained" in AA's files on July 18th. Although there were reports of people having issues well before, but, still, things might have changed on July 18th.

Then there's the issue of AA.com's pricing engine possibly doing things that they aren't supposed to in some cases, compared to talking to an AAgent, etc.

justind

I believe you're correct. The "hang up and call again" policy still works on this, only now you're hoping to get someone that DOESN'T know the rules. I really hope this is temporary thing that will disappear once the merger is complete and isn't a first step toward implementing this policy.

arlflyer

We can hope, but I do kinda wonder. It would certainly mitigate risk to not allow these routings, as ground transfers introduce a nontrivial chance of the pax not ending up at airport #2.

JonNYC

I'd say it's certainly the latter, not the former, if I'm reading your question right. That is to say, this -is- the new policy.

Dave Noble

I can't see why it would be temporary and would seem to be AA aligning its MCTs with US , which already had it

It isn't just a policy but is a change to the MCTs that are in the reservation systems. If looking at MCT for NYC, AA also now has inter airport changes "suppressed" for domestic-domestic connections

I would be surprised if it took very long for agents to be au fait with the meaning of suppressed

swag

Perhaps it doesn't matter, but why would an airline choose to suppress these connections? What is the benefit to them? It wouldn't seem to cut costs or increase revenues. And by offering additional options to potential ticket buyers, it could increase revenues.

And whatever the reason might be, why would the reason apply only to domestic connections but not international ones?

Dave Noble

Perhaps it reduces complaints and dissatisfaction from people buying tickets not realising that there is a airport change invoved.

With domestic travel, there would seem to be little reason for needing to change airports ; not too hard to arrange to end up at whichever of LGA/EWR/JFK as needed whilst with international flights, a lot less opportunity to do so. AA has ( for example ) no flights to/from Europe from LGA but a lot of domestic services operate there

JonNYC

Glad to see you changed your mind.

Dave Noble

In 1st post I thought that the poster was trying to depart on US and US has had that rule at the time so just adhering to US's rules rather than an introduction of a new policy to prohibit connections to US acrposs airports

That AA has also changed its policy I do not disagree with but hadnt noticed it at the time

arlflyer

Surely it has to do have something to do with the 4 hour versus 24 hour times before it becomes a "stopover". And risk mitigation within that 4 hour window. They're likely to have a lot of broken connections if they allow that in under 4 hours. Those 4 hours can get eaten up real quick.

Look at DCA-IAD. DCA, sometimes take 30 min to get a checked bag. Then someone calls Red Top or waits in the taxi line, 15-30 minutes sometimes, then hits horrible traffic to IAD on 66 or the DTR, then you get to Dulles, try to recheck, go through security, good luck if you don't have TSA Pre, ride the stupid train, walk to the VERY END of B where AA flies, and your 4 hours are gone.

I think the simple answer is:

1) They think a lot of people can't do it in 4 hours
2) They don't want to deal with picking up the pieces when it breaks
3) They don't want to relax their 4 hour domestic connection rule

JPG3392

Both of these things are quite possible. In any case, as of this morning [July 24th] the website still shows MUC/NUE/STR-TXL/DUS-JFK [AB}; LGA-DCA [US] flights as available for award travel in June 2015.

I can't book my own flight for another month or so, since I wish to travel in July 2015. If and when I end up trying to book flights with LGA-DCA as the last segment (it's not my first choice, but nothing better may be available), I'll report on the result.

HNL

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 7_1_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/537.51.2 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.0 Mobile/11D201 Safari/9537.53)

Yes that is because you are on an international to domestic connection. That is still allowed.

JonNYC

Zactly. Why are people having such a hard time with this?