yaychemistry

Phew - been on the EY F award roller coaster.

TL;DR: Got screwed by Citi clawing back a mileage rebate. Still might pull through...

My wife and I had started with QR awards in J (each on a separate PNR), but then I saw space open up on EY DEL-JFK in F. We were both short miles, so I called in, put two seats on EY F awards on hold (with the intention of splitting the PNR later) and start the transfer from SPG to top up the award.

Call 1:
Fast forward to this morning, SPG transfer posts, I call in to make the final reservation. First agent is very friendly, seems very helpful - offers to just "move the seats" from the EY PNR on hold to our existing PNRs. Maybe it will save her some typing so, why not? Pay the differences in taxes, complete the transaction, hang up the phone. Yay, so excited! Double check the reservation, realize that she put us in EY J!!!! What happened to the F availability?

Call 2:
Agent is very understanding. The F seats are showing as available. She grabs them. For some reason has to refund the taxes and then charge for them again, but they are for the same amount. Everything looks good. Hang up. Wife's PNR is ticketed within 30 minutes. Keep waiting on mine.

2 hours later, still not ticketed. Realize that my account is showing: total miles: 115k, available miles 108k. My best guess is that the stupid Citi bank mileage rebate from the original QR redemption is stuck in limbo. I don't have any hard evidence but the amount matches up.

Call 3:
Explain to agent the problem. She says that the PNR has been refunded due to insufficient miles. Only choice is to start over from scratch. Agent can't see ANY F on EY at all that week (etihad website shows tons - except 0 on the itinerary where my wife is booked). HUCA.

Call 4:
Try calling the Australia number on Google Voice. Call quality is so bad I just give up.

Call 5:
Agent sees the same availability that I do. I just buy the 7k miles that I'm short because I want to get this ticketed ASAP! Cancel my "refunded" PNR and the seat pops back up as available. Grabs the seat - triple check we're looking at the same flight as my wife's PNR. Book it, good to go, pay for the taxes. Hang up. Wait... Still waiting... 2 hours later. Still hasn't ticketed.

Call 6:
Agent says it's still in the ticketing queue, and is "under review". Nothing I can really do except wait.

So - here I am, still waiting what seems like ages and checking over and over again. Did the PNR get refunded? No way to know unless I call in again...

Wife is ticketed and ready to go, which is really the most important thing.

Interesting datapoints and lessons learned:
* It appears that some agents are able to grab F availability one by one (at least sometimes).
* Some agents see exactly what etihad.com seems. Some agents can only see Y availability.
* A "refunded" PNR looks exactly the same as an "On Request" PNR on AA.com
* Clicking "refresh" over and over on your email box doesn't make AA emails come any faster, but I keep doing it.
* Don't let an agent "transfer" availability from one PNR to another, too many chances for error.
* AA voice recognition is very bad at recognizing international cities. It thinks "Delhi" is Philadelphia, "Delhi, India" is Indianapolis, and "New Delhi" is Laguardia.

yaychemistry

Writing that post was very cathartic, and seems to have done the trick. The reservation ticketed only a few minutes after I made my last edits! EY Apartments, here we come!

daron4000

I still disagree that EY did what it needed to do to fix things - an F ticket is an F ticket - EY rebooking in lower cabin class instead of rebooking onto a different flight with F seats available means they didn't "rebook as necessary" in my book. And the fact they were able to reissue the ticket to Business means they should have been able to reissue onto a different flight with F available once I called them to notify them of my preferences, without AA's intervention.

That it was an AA award or that AA booked it shouldn't matter in terms of how EY handled the downgrade. The intention was to fly F and I was fully willing to purchase the seat out of JFK if that's what it took, and in fact had already done so, when AA finally rebooked me onto that flight (and subsequently helped refund the purchased reservation). This of course wouldn't have been possible without my proactivity, since EY neither notified me or AA of the downgauge and I would have only found out once I had shown up at IAD with no suitable options at that point.

More broadly speaking, at what point in the journey does it become the operating carrier's problem to solve the problems they create, rather than the ticketing carrier? If this happened mid-way through my itinerary, should I also be expected to call AA from halfway around the globe to sort it out while EY does nothing? Regardless, whether it was AA's problem to solve, I thought they did an exceptional job and went above and beyond by rebooking me into revenue F on an award ticket. The point of the post was to let others know about my experience so they are aware of the potential remedies that exist if another IAD flight is ever downgauged - hopefully they will know to check their reservations even on the day of departure to make sure nothing has changed.

HMPS

I booked my tickets and chauffeur one day prior to new policy. Since then had a minor schedule change, called to make sure. My habit to call again a few days before travel to go over all details.
Hope the ORD, BOM (x2) chauffeurs will be there.
Will double check when I hit AUH.

Kaitlin

I called AA four times to book XXX-AUH-JFK. All the agents could not see any availability on AUH-JFK, although both EY and ExpertFlyer were showing seats available. So I ended up calling AA in Australia, and "of course" the agent there could see available seats and booked it for me...

FMX

Yep, amazing, but true - I just called AA USA and they couldn't see any availability on the EY award I wanted, though the agent spent some time on it. Called AA AU and the agent found it and put it on hold for me. I then asked him to book another trip on QR and he could see nothing, though the BA site showed plenty of availability. Called AA USA back and they put that one on hold for me.

They told me that to book it with them I'd have to pay with a USA credit card, though. Is it the case for all their phone numbers that you must pay with a credit card from the country you're calling? (Sorry if this is a silly question, but I can't really read all 155 pages and a search doesn't find this.)

Edit: To answer my own question - AA AU were perfectly happy to take a non-AU credit card!

Stivelio

If I book a biz ticket using AA miles and have an infant travelling with me do I have to call Etihad or AA to book infant ticket? Also do I need to have any sort of availability to be able to book the infant ticket?

Dave Noble

You will probably have to deal with AA to purchase the ticket. The fare will be based on the lowest fare in that cabin that AA is able to sell.

for a round trip purchase the unrestricted fare that AA can sell at 10% cost looks like it will be about same price of EYs restricted fare where 20% of adult fare is charged ( looking at something like JFK-AUH r/t at approx $1500 r/t)

MDtR-Chicago

After reading this thread for a few hours, I'm starting to believe that our "dream vacation" is not realistic.

The goal is to fly two people SFO-MLE in Feb 2018, round trip, with as much of that journey as possible in Apartments. I had been thinking about SFO-JFK (AA F) -AUH (EY F Apartment) -MLE (EY F Suite) but it seems like the obstacles are:

1. It's nearly impossible to find even a single seat on JFK-AUH on the A380
2. Even if a seat were to open up, it's poor odds that an AA agent will be able to book it
3. Even if that were to work out, it's nearly impossible to find SFO-JFK in F in advance.
4. Let's ignore the part where I try to book a property in the Maldives using HHonors Points, that just happens to be available on that same week...

Is there any reasonable scenario to make this work? Maybe some kind of incremental strategy where I book what I can get and try to improve it later? (Preferably without lots of change fees, since neither one of us will have status by the time those dates open up.)

saaveraward

1) look at AUH-JFK-AUH availability and you will see JFK-AUH open
2) call AA in NZ to book
3) book Y or J and set an alert if F opens?
4) very easy to book the Conrad with Hilton points

It took a ton of work, but I was able to accomplish it with those tips.

MDtR-Chicago

I guess I shouldn't give up so soon... I'll get the miles in place before the schedule opens up and pray it all works out at some point.

Thanks for the encouragement!

bison1847

I can also mirror that suggestion. I did a similar trip (but started in LHR). I think first wait until exactly the day that the Etihad flights should open up.

Normally they open 2 guest seats on a A380. If they pop up go and try to book with AA Australia. If they don't work out the alternative is to try from LHR to AUH and take a AA or BA flight for the first leg. Bad news is that it will take 2 awards with that approach and a bit more travel time, but at least you could get there.

Also some people had good luck doing a RT search on Etihad and seeing that the USA-AUH leg was available that way.

The Conrad Maldives is great, I booked a week using my Hiltonhonors points. Might be the best hotel I have had. The only downside (And the dark secret for anything in the Maldives) is that the food costs are insane. Make sure you have free breakfast (the breakfast was incredible at the Conrad Maldives) via diamond or other status. But to give you an example a burger at the snack bar with a beer was over 40 USD for one person. Good quality burger (they say wagyu beef) but well 4 times the price it should be.

We did the wine tasting dinner which by the way was great but it was around 8-900 USD for 2. Any sit down dinner there is going to run 3-400 for 2 even with limited drinks.

So either way a great experience but the price was nuts. I think we could have lived in Thailand on a similar nice hotel white powder sand beach for 6 months compared to our food bill at the Conrad.

Also don't forget you have to use the sea plane to get there (500 per person if I remember correctly)

I stayed in the Seychelles a few years back and while it was also expensive the Seychelles was much cheaper then the Maldives and similar beaches, and lots of cool animals and nature (Aldabra Tortoises, prehistoric rainforest, coco-di-mere etc.) Maldives had great diving (as did Seychelles) but other then the big fruit bats and birds and some small lizards there were no real animals to see.

Anyways I think I would return to Seychelles or another Indian ocean island before I would return to Maldives. Still it was a great holiday, but considering I paid all flights and hotels using points and miles (I stayed a week at the Sheraton near Male also) I think this was still more expensive then every other trip I have taken.

venusaur5391

What were your ticketing and final change dates?

Mine was booked in March and finally changed in October and I have been denied despite them seeing the initial date. The agent told that there is no way to override it as an exception either.

saaveraward

So I'm in the same boat. What can someone recommend? Is the Blacklane app any good?

mitpat474

Yes same dates even sent emails with executives CC'd in, not budging. Its a loophole for them to be honest. I'm not sure of what to do next.