stevento

but NZ will pick up right away, and US will keep you on hold for an hour

NecessaryIndulgences

Everyone else has had this issue. And they all read the Wiki above where it tells you exactly how to select seats.

SeeBuyFly

I just put two tickets for JFK-AUH and AUH-JFK on hold through the US call center. An international call is not always necessary.I have rarely had to wait on hold. Admittedly I have some status. Status does not help when calling NZ, because the answering system doesn't ask for one's AAdvantage number. I have heard that Australians are an egalitarian people, maybe New Zealanders are also. Anyway, I have certainly had to hold for ~10 min calling the NZ number.

bison1847

Just booked and was ticketed AUH to JFK in August 2018 2 First apartments, I used the Australian call center. Also I booked 2 tickets AMS to AUH in biz for AUG 2018 used the UK call center.

anabolism

That's great to hear, but would be much more helpful if you mentioned the flight dates (even approximately), as the issue with US call centers has been limited to flights more than ~30-40 days out.

SeeBuyFly

My apologies; I should know better. JKF-AUH 14 Jan, return 23 Jan. I was just testing it and canceled it, so the seat went back into inventory---which means you can test it as well.

The acid test (for now) is, does the availability show when searching on etihad.com with the US airport as the origin? (i.e. not a fake AUH-origin RT.) If yes, AA-US will be able to book it. (For now.)

FlyerTalkUserName

Wow, JFK-AUH availability as a stand-alone. I think I've checked through EOS and been unable to find that.

CO777ER

I was able to book two first tickets yesterday on DFW-AUH-SEZ in March. This was through the regular Platinum US number.

spgplat21

Called the Australian call center two days in a row to book SIN-AUH-JFK and both days they told me they could see availability on the AUH-JFK leg, but they received an error message when trying to book and that it was an Etihad issue and to try back later. Not sure what the deal is, but the travel is for next September, so I'll try back again in a couple days and hopefully it will go through. The funny thing was I could hear a couple other agents in the background and it sounded like they were both working on flights to and from AUH on Etihad as well.

I thought it might be that they needed to be booked separately, but this itinerary can't price as a single award anyway so the agent acted like that wasn't an issue. I may try to just have them make two separate bookings fro the beginning next time I call to see if that gives me better luck.

EDIT: Just tried again this afternoon and the booking went through with no issues! Not sure what the issue was the past couple of days and they were able to include both legs on the same record.

CodeAdam10

One of my itineraries have been on-request since Nov 7

i follow-up daily and am always assured all-is-well. Ah, the anxiety.

Dave Noble

If you booked through the Australia office and you call it, the agent will sort out the ticket issue problem and have it issued within a couple of hours

I would check what the issue is since you don't want to risk missing any ticketing time limit that Etihad may have imposed

CodeAdam10

TICKETED AT LAST! What a tiring ordeal this was. I must have spent hours calling AA offices around the globe in the past 9 days.
@Dave Noble, I spoke to AU daily but they really couldn't move things along until today when they finally made it happen (they did assure me every time I called to not worry, but without a ticket number ... it's nothing but worries)

Thunderroad

Congratulations! But any sense of why it took so long?

trevisan26

After a few Australia, NZ and even HK calls, I called AA Brazil day 05/11 and the agent finally was able to see the award space. Another call on Wednesday 09/11 and they told me the previous agent forgot to put "Mr" for the two passengers and Etihad requested 4 days to accept the correction. On Monday 13/11 I called them one more time as my reservation was still on request and the agent told me to not worry because Etihad was correcting many other passengers that would be traveling sooner than me and that would take some more time. A few hours later I received the e-ticket and confirmation.

Well, I hope that after all that, the apartments will be a very nice experience.

kiltedflyer

Trust me, it will!