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Guide: Infant / lap child fares & fees for AA travel, including award & upgrades

Old May 17, 2014, 3:00 pm
FlyerTalk Forums Expert How-Tos and Guides
Last edit by: Prospero
Infant and lap child fares and fees on international travel, including award & upgrades

N.B.: This thread is restricted to discussion of AA (and AA awards, upgrades) ticketing rules for infants. Please do not use this thread to discuss opinions on safety issues associated with travel with lap children versus infants with their own purchased seats. Those discussions should be carried out in the

Travel with Children forum, where many opinions have been shared and are welcome. Thank you for your cooperation.
On AA there is no charge for a lap child on domestic flights. In most instances for international travel the cost will be 10% of the adult fare in the cabin of travel (be aware in some instances / on some other airlines, it can be 25% of the cost of an adult ticket). From aa.com:

Are you traveling with an infant?

Passengers are considered infants if aged over 2 days and less than 2 years at the beginning of their journey. To travel with an infant, you must be an adult passenger aged 16 or older. Adults can travel with up to two infants and in these circumstances, can purchase an additional seat at a child fare.

Although infants can travel as early as 2 days after birth, you'll need to provide a medical certificate for infants traveling within 7 days after birth. Please contact Reservations for more information.

On U.S. domestic flights:

Infants not occupying a seat travel for free. If you prefer to book a seat for your infant, a child fare will apply.

You must call AA on the phone to add a lap infant to an existing reservation. The lap infant will NOT appear in the online reservation and receipt.

Travelers with a lap infant may check in online, for domestic flights only, and the boarding pass will be annotated with the words "WITH INFANT" immediately after the traveler's name.

On international flights:

Infants not occupying a seat benefit from a 90% discount on most adult fares

If your infant turns 2 during your trip, we'll provide you with a complimentary seat on the return flight. If the return journey is not on American Airlines, please contact the other airline to check if a seat must be purchased. (Infants and children must provide passports with any required visas; all children not traveling with both parents may be required to have a Letter of Consent signed by both parents.)

You must call AA on the phone to add a lap infant to an existing reservation, and will need to pay the fare at that time. The lab infant and fare WILL appear in the online reservation and receipt.

Travelers with a lap infant may NOT check in online for international flights and must check in at the airport.

NOTE: AA will not generally block a complimentary spare seat to be used by an infant or lap child. If seats are available at the airport, it might be possible to be assigned seating to include an adjacent empty seat if the flight will depart with sufficient empty seats.

Bassinets: These are portable, not bulkhead fastened, floor bassinet boxes. Not all aircraft may offer these, and generally are restricted to bulkhead seats.

See the bassinet thread here."]here.

See more here on aa.com.

For AA policies on required documentation for children, see here.

and

This thread regarding the use - and prohibition, on some aircraft - child safety seats.

For older threads on this topic, see:

Print Wikipost

Guide: Infant / lap child fares & fees for AA travel, including award & upgrades

Old Jul 18, 2018, 11:03 pm
  #211  
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Originally Posted by Fire_Fly
If I book an AA economy award flight from CLT-PLS using BA Avios, am I charged 10% of the miles for a lap infant from BA at the time of booking or do I call AA after booking the adult tickets to add the infant and pay then?

FF
That is a route for which AA does not charge for infants. I would contact AA in the 1st instance on the process for an infant since there should be no need to pay anything for the infant. I think that AA will just be able to add the infant details
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Old Aug 29, 2018, 12:25 pm
  #212  
 
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Automatic seat block for lap child?

Hi fellas,

Summer Vacation! This coming weekend I'm going on a 15 hours flight with wife and almost-2-yo son on a 777-300. Initially I've selected 23A & 23C, with the middle one opened.
This morning when I went into the system, I saw the middle seat is occupied, with about 1/3 of the map still open. This really troubles me, why would anyone pick a middle seat when there's much better options available?
My only explanation is that it was done as a favor by the system? I called EXP line and asked, but no one could tell me whether it was selected by a passenger or system blocked.
I still have to option to go down to 34 A & 34C, but would rather keep 21 A&C if there's a way for me to find out if this is a courtesy block. Thanks.

AA193. Sep 2nd. EXP.
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Old Aug 29, 2018, 12:32 pm
  #213  
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I can't find a link, but I know I've seen previous reports of AA automatically blocking a seat/middle seat for a lap infant if a flight isn't full. I can't remember the details well enough to search for the threads discussing it though.
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Old Aug 29, 2018, 12:45 pm
  #214  
 
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They're occupied, not blocked. Only middle seats towards the front of the plane show up as free for those without status, which is also why 23E/G are occupied but not 23D/H.
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Old Aug 29, 2018, 1:09 pm
  #215  
 
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Originally Posted by Often1
What did AA say when you called to ask?
that they couldn't tell whether it was a block or occupied. Their system doesn't show.
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Old Aug 29, 2018, 1:22 pm
  #216  
 
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Keep in mind that what you see as "open" as an EXP isn't the same as what someone without status sees as "open".

Last edited by asf-07; Aug 29, 2018 at 1:28 pm
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Old Aug 29, 2018, 1:35 pm
  #217  
 
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I took a peak on Expertflyer, 23B is listed as Occupied, not blocked. The only blocks in Economy are whole rows it looks like.
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Old Aug 29, 2018, 1:39 pm
  #218  
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The EF seat map usually shows "X" for seats that are blocked from selection. In this case, 23B is showing occupied. I'm more inclined to believe someone was assigned the seat between your wife and you.

You can keep moving around the cabin to other trios of seats and hope someone else doesn't grab the seat between you two.

I realize it's a cost savings, but for such a long flight with a 2 year old it would seem prudent to buy the additional seat than roll the dice that you'll have an open flight with the unused seats.
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Old Aug 29, 2018, 1:43 pm
  #219  
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And you definitely shouldn't ask the person in the middle seat to swap to the window or aisle, that might put them in an awkward position due to the imposition. According to some posters, anyway.
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Old Aug 29, 2018, 3:42 pm
  #220  
 
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Possible that the person didn't really 'choose' the seat, but rather a travel agent did. And lots of people just book as far up the plane as they can find a seat. If they have no status and a lot of the 'empty seats' are blocked for elites, your middle seat may be the winner.

And since you are trying to get a free third seat, I won't be able to conjure any sympathy if you do end up failing on your mission. I frankly don't know why AA cares to courtesy block ahead of time, exp or not. Whenever my wife and I flew with our lap enfant, we just booked two seats together and lived with our decision to not pay for a third seat -- most of those trips were short, but did include a HNL-DFW trip.
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Old Aug 29, 2018, 9:47 pm
  #221  
 
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I had something similar happen a few months ago flying from SFO to ORD - wife (no status) in the window seat, baby as a lap infant, and myself (AA Gold) in the aisle seat on the same PNR and the AA app would show the middle seat as occupied. I tried changing seats to a row where all three seats were empty, and the “occupied” middle seat would follow me around. Then I decided to check EF and it showed that the middle seat was indeed blocked, so it seemed like a courtesy block for a lap infant to me. Didn’t bother calling AA but our flight went out with the middle seat empty which was nice.
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Old Aug 30, 2018, 11:49 am
  #222  
 
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Originally Posted by bunmango
I had something similar happen a few months ago flying from SFO to ORD - wife (no status) in the window seat, baby as a lap infant, and myself (AA Gold) in the aisle seat on the same PNR and the AA app would show the middle seat as occupied. I tried changing seats to a row where all three seats were empty, and the occupied middle seat would follow me around. Then I decided to check EF and it showed that the middle seat was indeed blocked, so it seemed like a courtesy block for a lap infant to me. Didnt bother calling AA but our flight went out with the middle seat empty which was nice.
You could be right. I was just trying to move around, and the 'ghost' is indeed following me after a few minutes after I picked en empty 3 seater row.
It sure seems like an automatic block. Learn something nice about AA today.
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Old Aug 30, 2018, 6:21 pm
  #223  
 
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This has come up before in the past, notably in a post I started as I experienced the same thing several times. No definitive answer from AA and lots of "opinions presented as facts" from folks here, but at the end of the day, the "ghost" in the middle seat followed me around the cabin for long enough I was convinced there was some sort of courtesy block happening. I managed my expectations accordingly that the seat would be filled (since there was no policy guaranteeing such a block) but also stopped trying to escape the ghost.

Ultimately I think the flights ended up going out full in most cases so the block didn't hold.
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Old Aug 30, 2018, 8:27 pm
  #224  
 
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Originally Posted by greasy
You could be right. I was just trying to move around, and the 'ghost' is indeed following me after a few minutes after I picked en empty 3 seater row.
It sure seems like an automatic block. Learn something nice about AA today.
Alaska Airlines consistently blocked the seat next to me whenever I had a lap child, both when my (then-Platinum, back when AA and AS had reciprocal elite recognition) AA number and my (then-no status) AS number were in the record. Speaking to AS agents, they consistently spoke of an "infant block" as policy, though I don't think AS has anything publicly written about that policy. The behavior was exactly as you describe: whenever I changed my seat, the seat map on alaskaair.com showed the seat next to me as occupied while ExpertFlyer showed it as blocked. So I think it's hard to describe this as anything but a deliberate blocking of the seat next to you by AA. ^

Note that AA (edit: with the pmUS reservation system) never did this for me when I had a lap child.

Last edited by ashill; Aug 30, 2018 at 11:09 pm
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Old Aug 30, 2018, 10:09 pm
  #225  
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Back in the LAA/SABRE-days, whenever a flight was not full and a pax had the INF-edit code; the system automatically set an "I"-block for the adjacent seat, in the seat map.

Not sure, if this is still the case nowadays...
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