Can I be booked on the same flight twice?
 

I currently have a ticket purchased on AA.com. However, I would like to buy a new ticket on orbitz, with some additonal stops, but the first two flights will remain the same. I want to purchase on orbitz before I cancel the aa.com flight. Will this work? Thanks for the help.

They'll catch it.... I had it happen by accident once when Amex booked the same ticket twice by accident. AA caught it pretty quick, and let me know.

Nothing will prevent you from holding more than one reservation or having more than one set of tickets issued off the same reservation. If you have a duplicate booking (on AA)--the system will cross reference each reservation with a note saying poss dupe booking, see *****. Some airlines (not AA) will cancel all reservations that it determines to be dupes.

I actually had AA.com refuse to let me purchase a second ticket because it thought it was duplicate-as my son and I have the same name. Even with different ff#'s in the system and different return flights-it took a call to CS to let me book the second ticket.

But what if you wanted to purchase two seats on the same flight in your name because you wanted the additional comfort or are overweight?

This can be done but it is a different process than having two different PNR's. If you want two seats, you would reserve them in the same reservation and there are many fares that give you a discount on the second seat. If you do this, you need to make sure the gate agent knows what is going on so they do not try to fill the seat with a non-rev or if they are in an oversold situation.

I highly doubt you will have a problem - you booked the first at aa.com and the second at Orbitz.com. Since these two booking engines take time to reconcile themselves with one another it may never catch it or will catch it after the second ticket is issued.

Do yourself a favor, on the second booking don't input the same FF#. Have it input afterwards. Also, use a different credit card as payment - this will also reduce the chances that the system could flag you.

I ended up just changing my existing reservation, so I don't know how it would have turned out. Thanks for all the advice, I'm sure it will come in useful another time.

I just did this several times in the past week. When I reserved the second, more desireable itinerary I then went back and cancelled the first reservation. AA.com had no problem allowing me to book duplicate segments.