lewis_saint

Let's say I have 2x XXX-AUH-JFK in J, and I am looking to upgrade the AUH-JFK segments to F once inventory becomes available. I am expecting for 2x F seats to be released at the same time, but I have read reports of 1x F being available at a time, whereby a second F seat is available once the first is taken.

If I know that 2x Guest First seats are available, but AA can only see 1x at a time, what should be tactic be?

OPTION #1: Split the booking, and upgrade one ticket at a time. However, if the second F seat doesn't become available, will I be able to reverse the first upgrade?

OPTION #2: Do a hold on the 1x F seat with a new reservation, and see if a second seat opens up. However, I won't be able to merge this with my existing itinerary.

Thoughts?

Dave Noble

Option 1 is the better of the 2 I would suggest as long as you are prepared that you may have to travel separately. Once the business class seat is lost it may not return to award inventory

Option 2 seems to have zero benefits unless you can find availability from XXX-AUH too to just make an entirely new reservation and cancel the 1st

Unless prepared to travel in different cabins, I wouldn't go for it. Is it that important to travel together?

lewis_saint

Thank you for helping to evaluate my logic. For option #3, if hypothetically there is 1x J XXX-AUH seat still remaining at the time of 1x F AUH-JFK seat becoming available, would a sensible approach be:
- create a hold on a new booking for passenger A on XXX-AUH-JFK [in J/F respectively]
- see if a second F seat opens up on AUH-JFK
- if it does, then drop passenger A from the original booking (and ticket his new booking), and upgrade passenger B to F for AUH-JFK
- if it doesn't, and I'm not prepared to travel in separate cabins, then let the new held booking expire

Does that scenario work? Is it possible to have multiple reservations for the same passenger on the same flight? (Or rather one ticketed reservation, and one held reservation)

Dave Noble

That would work as long as you do it all in one go and do not leave multiple reservations hanging on one flight for too long

lewis_saint

Perfect. This is indeed an art form. Thank you kindly.

Cohall

I just booked another business class (DEN-PHX-SFO-AUH) for later this year without needing anyone to contact the US desk. Literally took less than ten minutes from the time I picked up the phone to dial the Australia number, to having everything complete.

I think your advice is wise if you're running into issues for some reason, but for basic reservations like mine (and the previous several I've made over the past few weeks), there's no need to put something on hold and then call the US. The Australia desk is perfectly capable of booking everything for you in most cases.

as219

This thread has been very useful... But I find myself in a bind. We booked CAI-AUH-JFK in F for early 2017 as a placeholder with the intent to move it to a date in late March when it opens up. Over the past couple of days, I've made some dry runs to see if we could change to late Feb 2017 dates as soon as they open up...but I'm running into the same issues as people are describing here. AA-USA can't see what I see on etihad.com. AA-Australia sees a bit more, but no dice on the AUH-JFK segment. This is making me very nervous. I've asked agents to try booking segment-by-segment as well as point-to-point, but the results are the same.

Is there anything more I can be asking agents to do? Is etihad.com a definitive source of what is and isn't actually available?

Oy.

CodeAdam10

Wow - really? I know the add-on segments has been a big problem ... haven't heard of issues with AA Aussie not being able to find space for / change the primary AUH<>JFK segment.

Likely your CAI>AUH add-on flight is causing the issues...so...I'm curious, are they able to see the award space if they perform a "new" search?

SeeBuyFly

As CodeAdam10 has said, ask them to try booking AUH-JFK as a separate record ("in a separate window"). This will cost you more miles to book, of course, and you won't be able to do a free change.

If you try to book two connecting flights in the same record, as soon as one is held the other one will become unavailable. It doesn't matter whether 'segment by segment' or 'point to point'. That is why it's AUH-JFK which is unavailable in this case: since it's CAI-AUH-JFK, the agent is (successfully) holding CAI-AUH first, and then failing to get AUH-JFK even though it is available.

as219

I appreciate that this is a solution, but it's not really reasonable to have to pay another 25K per person because of a computer glitch. Is it really the case that I'm simply out of luck here unless I'm willing to fork over another 50K for the two of us? Has anyone been able to change multi-segment tickets in this situation?

arfaczar

A couple of posts upthread have reported success using AA aus to find/hold flights with the same o/d & routing as the existing award ticket. Then have AA us change the date to the held reservation. Someone even said they conferenced in the US AAgent on the call with Aus agent. Good luck!

lewis_saint

If I have a ticketed award reservation with AA and want to upgrade from J to F, and there is award inventory available, can I do a 5-day hold on the upgrade if I don't have the needed number of miles in my account? Or, can an upgrade only be done if all of the miles are currently available?

A4K

You can't hold unless you make a new reservation. You will need the miles in there when you call to upgrade.

Big_Foot

I think it s@cks, but I don't think it's a computer glitch...
I think its all blocked by Etihad. Sooner or later (sooner) they will block all space.
Or the situation will change after all the date changes people are hoping to make
will be completed.
I'm following some space AUH-US and it looks like nothing is uploaded
starting March 1st. I know there is a delay in F release, but it's been
very consistent (~10 days) until now.

omaralt

Have you called and tried to upgrade? Because I had a ticket in J and wanted to change it to F and they weren't able to. I confirmed there was availability but when they tried to change the existing reservation the availability went away. However they could see it if they made a new reservation. So the only option was to cancel the J ticket, pay $150 re-issuing fee and then make a new F reservation.