Dave Noble

Not what I asked though - has the fare itself expired

dciolli

I talked with Web Services, and they confirmed the IP Address as mine. I also validated the time with my browser history. They reiterated that this wasn't automatically canceled by their system.

As I talked with them through the clicks I made, I remembered there was an issue with the reservation. When I checked my list of trips, this itinerary wasn't showing up. I found this odd since every other time I've held a reservation in the past (along with a dummy reservation I made yesterday), it shows up in My Trips with status of "Held through xx/xx/xx".

At that point, I used the Find Reservation link with my record locator. It found my itinerary and then it showed up in My Trips with status of Held. Since I thought it was fixed, I didn't think twice and proceeded to check a different record. There is no way I cancelled this as it would have prompted me to confirm my selection in the second screen. Clearly something got screwed up in their system at this point, so I recommeded they report this internally. I work in IT, and it seems lIke I stumbled across a bug.

Since the fare no longer exists, they said there is nothing they can do right now. I already found a different fare on AS out of Burbank around the same price that works better for me, so I'm not pursuing this any further with AA.

Thanks for all your help!

MAH4546

This happened to me once. AA can absolutely honor the fare, as they did with me. It wa a pretty painless process, agent was able to do it in about 10 minutes.

swag

As recently as May (after the April change to offer 24 hour refunds) I put a 7-day advance fare on hold exactly 7 days out, and I had no issues ticketing it the next day, even though that made the purchase 6 days in advance.

Dave Noble

that is still not the same as the fare no longer being offered. If it was just the AP issue to get approved, I would have thoght that the issue could be resolved

I am referring to the situation where a fare is no longer offered for sale , not just where not meeting the criteria for purchase of a listed fare

Kamalaasaa

This might be immaterial (no pun intended!), but saying a fare no longer exists seems silly to me. A fare is not a physical object. It's not like a sweater, where if the retailer sells them all, there really are no more to be had.

A carrier can charge whatever it wants, whenever it wants. Someone in the company has the authority/ability to sell a seat at a price that is no longer on public offer - even if that someone ends up being the president. This all seems somewhat ridiculous.

flyerCO

Fares are filed, they are a thing. They are a set of rules and restrictions. When no longer being offered, they no longer exist. Just because they might offer it again to a passenger doesn't change the fact it no longer exists.

Madison Guy

Is this an example of what you mean:

9/15/2016: MSN-SYD
9/19/2016: SYD-MSN
8/19/2016: Date reservation held
8/20/2016: Date reservation ticketed -although fare had been "pulled"
Fare Basis: OLX4QT1

This fare will show on EF (even today) using the flight dates about and the 8/19 ticketing date. A 8/20 ticketing date and it does not show up. Since I booked this flight, I can be quite certain that I booked this on 8/19 and ticketed on 8/20 because both AA.COM and EF showed the fare had been pulled - no longer offered for sale - not just outside the criteria. Yet the 24-hour hold was in fact honored. BY AA.COM. No human needed. (If this is in fact an example of what you mean?)

Dave Noble

Yes - did you do it on the 20/8 within 24 hours of placing the hoid - where DOT requires fares to be held or > 24 hours as the poster tried to do?

RogerD408

Yes, more frequent than you might guess. I've had fares "expire" while in the process of booking! If you don't get past the payment step before the fare dies, you lose. This is a case of spending all night trying to work out a trip with airlines, hotels, and trains, you're ready to lose your mind. I don't bother reading the fare rules to find out if I'm playing with a ticking time bomb, and guess what, once it's expired the rules are gone!

jordyn

The theory that you are trying to articulate--that AA only holds inventory and not the fare, is just not how it actually works. You've offered no evidence that it does: no language offered by AA in its rules, not a single reference to a single FTer who was ever told by AA that this is how it works, not a blog post by someone who talked to AA, nothing. This is random speculation on your part not matched by anyone's actual experience. If this was actually how it worked, it would certainly happen to people from time to time and there would be actual discussion of it here; rather than expecting people to prove the negative, you should be bringing some degree of proof that it works the way you describe.

Also note that AA uses the exact same language to talk about paid holds as they do for the free ones. Is your theory that if you pay them money to hold your reservation that they withdraw the fare in the meantime that they're just going to tell you "oh, too bad, you were only holding the inventory because the DOT doesn't require that we do anything but guarantee a fare for 24 hours?"

usuario

A remote possibility is different time zones, but that's only applicable if you tried to purchase when in a different time zone from the flight departure city.
Once I forgot to purchase a held fare by 11:59ET but found out that it's actually held until 11:59PT because it originates from the west coast.

Madison Guy

Yes, I did. I see your point. But I was under the assumption the OP returned to ticket under the same scenario - just found it had been canceled. I though your point was that once no longer available for purchase, any form of purchase was no longer possible. Perhaps I misunderstood one or more points.

EDIT: The actual purchase happened well after 24 hours, but before the 12 midnight CDT mark where the res auto-cancels. I just looked up the timestamps of the email and it was early afternoon on the 19th when I held it - near midnight on the 20th when I got email conf of ticketing, and I know I waited only about 15 minutes after purchase before ticketing. (In fact that's the normal amount of time for all my ticket purchases to process - longer and something is usually wrong. I know reports of others waiting much longer, but...)

Madison Guy

Yes, and this can cause a headache on the 5-day award hold returning from OZ (being a day ahead) ticketing in the States!