cctible

I am having trouble booking a flight and was hoping for suggestions. I am looking for a RT from the Middle East to the US. The leg to London is always on BA, but then you usually have the option of selecting an itinerary that uses a BA or AA flight on to the US. I prefer AA for the long leg because of the better seat configuration in J. I just did this last week....booked through aa.com, had a BA flight to London then AA flight to the US, and the same in reverse. But when I look for summer 2018 flights on AA, it only gives me (for J) the option of taking BA all the way. There are a couple of options that include an AA flight to the States, but then it only offers Main Cabin and not Business. But when I search for direct flights from London to the US (not including the Middle Eastern leg) on aa.com, it gives several options for AA flights in J. So I know those flights exist for the dates I'm looking at. Why is aa.com forcing me to book BA flights?!?! I purposely book through AA because I don't want to fly BA more than I have to. So frustrating.

Any suggestions on how to work around this? Thanks for your help!

Guvner067

Have you tried calling?

cctible

I haven't yet. I will if I need to, but I thought perhaps there was some trick to it that other people knew.

jridge

To clarify, are you trying to make an award redemption or purchase a paid ticket?

cctible

A paid ticket

CloudCoder

First suggestion: try again. I have found many times when, in the middle of the night, all of the AA longhaul flights disappear. A few hours later, just as suddenly, they're baaaack.

Suggestion #2 : Book it as a multi-city trip, which allows you to select each segment separately.

Suggestion #3 : Book it any way you can, but put it on Hold. Then call AA and ask them to change the rez to the segment you actually want.

econometrics

CloudCoder has good advice. That's what I would do - try one of those 2 options.

Where airport are you looking at in the Middle East?

I come across this issue all the time on AA.com trying to get tickets to TLV. For me, though, usually AA won't sell me a BA codeshare, only an LY flight. So I have to call often to get them to sell me the ticket with a BA flight number from LHR-TLV-LHR inside the AA reservation. Makes no sense that they would sell me non-oneworld flights first.

cctible

CloudCoder, thanks for the suggestions. I have tried it several times over the course of a few weeks, so I don't think that will fix it. But I will try the multicity ticket and maybe also your suggestion to put a ticket on hold and then call in. ^

Econometrics, it's BAH. It doesn't make sense to me either. I don't know why AA would try to sell me BA flights over AA flights!

JDiver

For AA, there’s no revenue difference due to the AA-AY-BA-IB joint business agreement. There’s actually no reason to program flight sales displays on JBA routes to bias toward AA, and logically it’s easier for a BAH-LHR-USA passenger to transit T-5 and not have to make Mister Toad’s wild ride to T-3.

If you call, be sure to remind them a call should be free if the itinerary is not bookable on line.

platbrownguy

I did a random search for BAH-LHR-ORD on Google Flights and it gave me this seemingly very reasonable itinerary (sub-$3000 rt for next month): https://www.google.com/flights/#sear...a=ONEWORLD;s=1

The odd thing is that on Google Flights, the first leg changes from business to economy after I select the flight options -- but when I click the pricing link through to AA.com, it comes up just fine as business on all 4 segments (BA on BAH-LHR, AA on LHR-ORD), and prices correctly.

OP, what are your dates? Maybe we can give you a Google Flights link you can use, if you're still having trouble.

Edited to add:
Frustratingly, the link that I posted no longer goes to the same flights. Try this link, then try clicking the first option for each flight leg: https://www.google.com/flights/#sear...a=ONEWORLD;s=1

cctible

Well I called AA. The lady said that the British Airways, BAH to LHR leg was sold out in business. I pointed out that ba.com is showing tons of availability. She said it was something about the fare bucket available through AA. I can book the exact flights I want from ba.com, but at 4x the price. Sigh. Upon further examination on aa.com, this seems to be a problem pretty much the entire month of June. I know it's a busy time of year, but that seems really unfair that there isn't a single BA business class seat (BAH-LHR) bookable through aa.com that month. Is there any way to work around that without paying $10,000+ (that's what ba.com is charging for the roundtrip BAH to US flight!!!)? Can a travel agent do that?

Thanks!

cctible

P.S. On July 2nd, those business flights are available again. Would there be a reason that AA can't sell BA business seats for that journey the whole month of June?