AA Ticket Endorsement Policy? (obsolete)
 

Does anyone know what AA's official policy on endorsing a ticket to another carrier is? I know they will obviously do so for cancellations where they are at fault; but are there any other qualifications such as time of delay, cause, ticket fare/price, status?

I'm curious because they endorsed a ticket to OAL for me, but stated it wasn't normal policy in my situation. Interestingly, I think AA made money on this as the endorsed fare appears to be lower than the AA fare.

I don't have an answer for the question about the criteria for endorsing a ticket to another airline, but given the massive consolidation plus the fact that DL no longer accepts AA tickets (no interline agreement with DL anymore), that leaves UA (and maybe AS) as the sole domestic interline partners to which AA could endorse a ticket.

Internationally, AA can endorse tickets to other international airlines, but since it has immunized joint ventures with BA/AY/IB and JL, it's not a big deal for AA to endorse tickets to them as they share revenues and profits within their specific joint ventures.

Check the contract of carriage.

Only by providing details (you've provide absolutely zero) can you be informed as to how unusual or beyond-policy it was, if at all.

^ ^ ^

Well I was hoping an official policy existed and was known.

My particulars were a 2hr weather delay (weather in my departure city) on AA's latest daily flight due to a delayed incoming flight which had not yet taken off. Because the delay was still unknown -- in past experience, the incoming flight delay often grows to 3+ hours, even as bad as 6 hours, and has caused the crew to time out and the flight to be cancelled -- I asked to take the non-delayed OAL flight while the possibility still existed.

<redacted>

What other piece of information are you looking for?

• Flight is delayed due to weather
• Request for ticket endorsement is granted when delay is 2 hours and growing, with the caveat that endorsements are not normally granted for weather.

Everything else I said is supporting information justifying the request:

• AA flight is last flight of the day, hence possibilty of being stranded overnight
• OAL flight is not delayed due to weather but is departing
• If I wait longer, I will not make the OAL flight.
• Anecdotally, I have experienced the growing delays on this flight before of 3, 4, 6 hours ; and have had this flight cancelled due to crew time out.

I'm not trying to play games just not trying to get anyone in trouble, if it is indeed out of policy. Are you asking for city names or flight numbers? Those don't seem like they would affect the question.

Surely there is an AA policy that says exactly when endorsements should be granted, like:

• Mechanical
• Crew time out
• Delays of X hours or more

Yes, the cities and flight numbers, as well as your cabin and status are factors for us to help you. International long haul is different from domestic short haul. As is EXP status versus thing status.

The other airline is pretty important here (and never mentioned) as AA and DL no longer interline and thus AA can no longer endorse over to them.

OP still shows himself as a US CP. No idea if he is still EXP on AA.

But, rather than speculating about whether it is his status, his class of service, fare basis, AA's need to free up space for "must flies" and so on, it would be most helpful if OP could provide all of his flight details.

Without that, the answer will be, "maybe it was...."

Involuntary reroutes onto another airline during IROPS due to weather (or any other force majeure event) are rare, generally because there is little to no point since it's it like a United flight to the same place will be any less affected by weather. However, I want to say that AA does do it as a matter of policy of no alternative exists on AA within 24 hours.

It's definitely more common for mechanical or crew delays/cancellations, typically if the other airline has an itinerary that would arrive earlier than the next available AA protect.

As has been mentioned earlier, the options for domestic reroutes are extremely limited nowadays. And for INVOL purposes, BA/IB/AY, JL, and QF aren't really considered OA since they're joint venture partners and the revenue is shared regardless of whose plane you end up on.

Sure they can. It depends on the routing. I've had UA do it when going SEA-SLC once. SFO was having weather and had a delay, but the nonstop on DL to SLC was just fine. They put me on that so I didn't have to mess with SFO.

Now whether AA will be that proactive or not, I can't say. If my AA connecting point is having weather but UA could get me there, I would hope they'd do the same.