Still not the best on US airlines. However it is much improved.

I think they removed the 24-hour hold, now you have to actually buy the tickets and then cancel for a refund. I did this once, I think it was American (might have been United) and the refund process took several weeks plus a few emails. The other airlines seem to have just a "cancel" button and it all automatically goes back.

The hold option was there for me today.

The new language suggests a change to the refund process to make it automated. If so, that's a huge positive by itself. Expanding tickets eligible for this is icing on that cake. Hope they keep hold. It has some value in the AA world to help save phone agent time (booking with vouchers, confirming upgrades at booking.)

NICE. Very nice.

But, award tickets can only be cancelled by calling Reservations?

Can cancel online. However to get miles back you have to call.

Sorry – not directed at you. But, MEH. DL and UA still (as of now) offer 24 hour refunds on ANY tickets purchased, even 30 minutes before the flight. Still not good enough or competitive. Classic AA, "going for great". :rolleyes:

BTW, I was able to put a ticket on hold as of 5/19.

Seems to me American's policy is actually *better*, then, no? Correct me if I'm wrong, but the others don't offer holds, which would seem to essentially allow you an *extra* 24 hours on American to lock a ticket in (hold for 24 hours, buy, and still have 24 hours for a refund).

I was under the impression that once AA got their refund policy completely standardized, they would discontinue free holds. Wasn't that what was supposed to happen?

It got pretty confusing, but, yes, that was my understanding (I think!):
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...-but-read.html

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...ov-2016-a.html

You're thinking of United. AA only requires you to fill out a simple form on https://prefunds.aa.com/refunds/ . No emails needed.

This normally works very well, but it glitched on me for a $3000 ticket last fall and it indeed required phone calls and emails (and several weeks) to get the refund processed, and I recall it being very cumbersome. Not sure why that happened, I've probably had a dozen other uneventful refunds.

I used this 24 refund policy yesterday. I feel like AA is just getting in line with everyone else -- I would normally book all my AA tickets with someone else like Priceline just to get a proper 24 hour refund policy.

A had to book via a corporate travel agency earlier in the week though, so it was nice to have this policy in place so I could refund/change my flights. Good to see AA making some positive changes with booking & refunds.

My anecdote was I held (24 hour free) 3 F tickets for an October trip yesterday morning (5/19) and the hold was scheduled to expire 11:59EDT this evening (5/20) and I just purchased them and the 24 hour refund item was listed on the purchase page with the link that was listed in this thread. I had been doing rolling holds of that trip for about a week. In some cases, the hold did not cancel out automatically and I could proceed to the purchase page 2-3 days later. However, the last couple days it did cancel out as advertised.

Um, how would you make use of a 24 hour refund on a ticket purchased 30 minutes before a flight? :confused: