GetawaysRus

I'm hoping someone can explain this to me. I thought I was pretty experienced at AA awards, but this is confusing me.

Next year, my wife and I plan to visit the Galapagos. Then we'd like to make a stop in southern Florida for a week. So I'm looking for an award ticket on AA in J from UIO to MIA. (After our Florida week, we'll then fly home to Southern California.)

If I search the AA website for a UIO to MIA award in J, I see very limited availability in J on only a few dates in April or May 2017.

For jollies, I searched UIO to LAX for the same dates. There is lots of availability for an award in J. Many of these flights route through MIA.

So why is AA allowing a UIO to LAX award (which has a stop in MIA) but the website does not show similar availability for UIO to MIA? I don't get it.

We're going to have checked luggage. I don't see how I could take an award that is UIO to MIA to LAX and simply plan to skip that last leg.

Should I plan to simply phone an AAgent (rather than try to use the website) and ask if they can get the UIO to MIA leg for me?

Thanks.

teevee

same reason that sometimes AA charges less for LGA-MIA-MGA than MIA-MGA. because they can.

not that im advising this, but in MIA you MUST claim your checked bags prior to exiting customs, then re-check them immediately after customs. so, in theory, one could claim checked bags and walk out of the airport....

dkc192

Interesting. I thought award tickets were strictly on a segment-per-segment basis, i.e. a UIO-LAX award via MIA requires award inventory (U) to be separately available and for "sale" on the UIO-MIA and MIA-LAX flights. In contrast, revenue tickets don't price that way, as the previous poster alluded to.

Without looking up specific flights on EF, my hunch is that the UIO-LAX J awards have much more availability because the UIO-MIA segment is ticketing into T (coach award) while the MIA-LAX segment is ticketing into U or Z (business or first award). Thus the AA website displays it as a "business" award, even though one segment is in coach. OP: did you check UIO-MIA award availability in Y and see if those available dates match those for UIO-LAX in "J"?

Also, FYI, I believe MIA has a means for international-to-domestic checked bags to be screened for customs without the passenger needing to claim it at bag claim, which is to say, if you do ticket UIO-LAX, your bag will be sent straight to LAX without you getting a chance to claim it at MIA. I believe MIA is currently the only US airport with this set up. Can others confirm?

danohio

MIA and I believe DFW are equipped to handle that as an I-to-I transfer, but never I-to-D. All pax will claim bags in MIA if making a domestic connection.

3Cforme

That is known as married segment availability. 'Because they can' is fundamentally correct. In this example they want to offer saver availability on UIO-LAX but not UIO-MIA. There are reports that married segment availability is presently practiced on award redemptions by AA, DL and UA. It's been a revenue management practice on purchased tickets for at least 25 years on AA.

The international arrival immigrations/baggage claim/customs/baggage drop sequence has been known to be useful in other circumstances. It would be really awkward to get an IROPS reroute of UIO-DFW-LAX, wouldn't it?

dkc192

Good call. I stand corrected!

dkc192

If this is indeed practiced on AA award tickets, I'd be interested to hear other examples of specific markets where AA practices this! I thought award tickets were strictly on a segment-per-segment basis, but again, I'm happy to be proved wrong.

3Cforme

I can't cite city pairs but there is plenty of discussion in the forum. Advanced search on 'married segment, award' finds many threads including this:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...l#post26309194