No, because adding a segment at the beginning to a ticketed award will trigger a fee right there.

I think he meant that if you know you might want to switch between EWR and JFK to add a segment prior to that when you make your initial booking and that way you shouldn't have to pay any change fee for shifting between EWR and JFK. Then you don't have to fly the initial domestic segment at all.

Ahhhhh, I see. Appreciate the explanation, I'd recommend against, but if the $150 is that vital, I suppose each will have to make their own decision on just how much effort it's worth to avoid it. And, of course, the risk of any policy being reevaluated when a pattern of abuse manifests itself.

The rules for dropping segments, etc., are all from internal sources, 90%+ via me.

Too much of this garbage goes on/gets suggested... less info will be allowed through. We're lucky they put up with as much as they do in this area.

The info is meant to -help- AAdv members use their miles-- not help them cheat the system.

SO, do as one sees fit, but, please let's keep these little rule-abusing schemes off here, please. Lest we find ourselves with changed rules and/or no access to them.

This wouldn't apply to me anyway because I'm ticketed already so adding a segment will definitely incur the change fee as you already mentioned.

If I do end swapping EWR to JFK flight I will be certain to report back here if there was a change fee or not.

The rule is to charge if you are not EXP. However agent sometimes forgets because it is a manual process AFAIK.

So I were you, I would be prepared to pay the fee, but considered self lucky if agent does not charge it.

Now if you are upgrading from J to F, then the fee would not be charged - this is one of the few good features AA program has. Upfare does not incur fee as you would pay more miles to upfare (unlike other programs that you still need to pay the change fee.)

My bad on that one. Just a side thought from my experience being able to change my connections between LGA, JFK, EWR coming from YYZ.

So far, on 2 out of 2 voluntary cancellations I haven't been charged the change fee even without status. I was told about the fee on the call, but they never showed up on my credit card. I consider myself lucky.

Exactly. It is a manual handling, not an automatic process. Agent could forget to do it after finishing the change / reissue the ticket, hence the customer is not charged at the end, despite being told about the fee.

Answering part of my own question: just checked BA and there's one F award available on 1/23 - 19 days before the flight - with F-5 availability.

That would be the suggested approach for someone intending to start in NY but the desired class/airport is not available at time of booking.

Is it just me or has CX F availability out of North America been further reduced? It used to be fairly easy to get 2 x F seats out of ORD or JFK, but now I can only find 1!

Such as the elimination of the "free stopover at int'l gateway on int'l awards" rule? Rather than use it to provide a bona fide stopover, many people in these parts promoted its use to get a free additional one-way domestic ticket for a separate trip. Now it's gone, and those of us that found it useful to use as intended - for a stopover along the way on an int'l trip - can no longer do so.

No it's not just you, I'm seeing the same. I was going to go with KE F even though CX F is way better, but KE F is still better than CX J and it was way easier to find 2 seats on my desired dates which I had on hold. However, that plan went out the window when I found out too late that Chase had pulled the ability to transfer UR points to KE some time in November and although they say it is temporary, transfers have still not resumed. Thus we are currently booked into CX J which was relatively easy to find and I'm busy checking almost hourly to see if anything in F opens. And when I once did find a single F seat on one of my flights the hold time of 45 minutes with AA caused me to lose it :(.

An *exceptional* example.

Reduced in what sense? I don't think capacity hasn't been reduced. More like more people chasing after the same seats.

I wonder if this is partly due to all those people who got 100K miles for signing up for the credit card a few months ago....