AA Initiated Flight Change - 7 Hours Later - Options?
 

Long time lurker, first time poster....

In January, I booked a flight on AA from ORD->DEN from 7:30A-9:50A, coming up this Sunday (March 24th), for myself, my wife and my 2 kids. We were all sitting in the same row, and I paid for the tickets via $$$ rather than via Points.

I received notice yesterday from AA that my flight has changed to 3:10P->4:50P, so a 7 hour difference. And we are not sitting together any longer.

There are connecting flights that get into DEN closer to 1, which works better for us, but some of the available seats are in first class, and AA support is telling me they can't explore moving me to the connecting flight until the 72 hour window for Exec Plats clears. By that time, the other seats in coach may be gone.

I'm supposed to meet a family member who happens to be in the area for dinner that night before they leave town, and won't make it if I get in on the 450p arrival.

I've read elsewhere that AA will move you to a new flight, even if booking classes don't match, when a flight is changed over 90 minutes, but can't find anything definitive I can share with AA.

Anyone have any experience or pointers on what to do here?

I'm currently Plat Pro, and am easily trending toward Exec Plat this year, should that make a difference.

They'll move you to any coach seats but they won't give you first class. The point is you don't need the same discounted coach fare bucket.

You could also get a full refund and book a nonstop on United.

Welcome to FT. Not sure what the person you spoke with talking about re: you can't change until 72 hrs before, but that is complete nonsense. Maybe they were trying to say that if you waited until 72 hrs before, when some upgrades might clear, there would be more seats in economy free'd up that you could switch to? Who knows.

Take a look at aa.com (or Google Flights etc.) and find any connecting or nonstop itineraries that arrive within your desired window with coach seats available. Then call AA back, tell them there was a schedule change and the new flight times do not work, and ask specifically to be moved to the flights you find online. For a paid ticket in coach this should be a very easy change, however if you happen to get any resistance or another bad agent just HUCA.

Everything that day looks pretty full - Y3 is the best I can see (via CLT) – but almost everything is zero across the board.

I presume this is a result of the 737Max grounding.

That was my interpretation of it. She said that there was an internal service bulletin published this morning which systematically prevents adding my fam to the trip, even though there will be economy seats which will open when the upgrades clear.

The 8:30 CLT was the one I was looking at for the same reason you mention.

I'm going to try again and see if I can upgrade our seats to FC via $$$/Points, which maybe will get us all onto the earlier flights.

Thanks for the thoughts, all~

I've been checking throughout the day and haven't seen anything with 4 seats direct (or connecting, for that matter).

What flight #(s) did you see? And did you have the date correct? You referenced March 14, but my travel is on March 24th.

Thanks for the reply.

I saw the same thing when I searched, and brought it up to the 2nd CSR that I spoke with.

She said that although the seat map was showing open seats, that the reality is that there actually aren't that many available on the flight. The reason - people who have purchased tickets without a seat assignment (the ultra-economy tickets) take up some of the seats which are shown as Open on the Seat map,so what we see in the map isn't reality.

Not sure how much truth lies in that, but I can see some validity in it.

I can't yet post pictures of the maps & $$$ due to my limited post count, but the seat pages show double digits in economy, but the ticket purchase page only shows 2 in Economy and 3 in FC.

That's not a great indicator either. AA may be willing to oversell the flight, but wouldn't necessarily move people to a flight that doesn't have the capacity available.

This is what I see from ExpertFlyer with regards to going through CLT on 3/24:

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...7ee6da5d1c.png

Could you fly into COS and drive up to DEN (it's about a 90 min drive without traffic)?


https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...7b4dfb1545.png

I can't think of a carrier that transfers passengers onto an already overbooked flight. Just means that many more passengers they need to VDB/IDB. Sort of a silly idea and has nothing to do with the underlying circumstance.

OP this seems like the best bet... AA will do a change within 300 miles no problem.

Didn't think of this earlier, but particularly if you are located north of Chicago, you could start from MKE and go through DFW. The DFW-DEN flight shows Y4, but there appear to be plenty of unassigned seats (presumably a lot of people booked on a Basic Economy fare, didn't want to pay for a premium seat, or otherwise have unassigned seats).
https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...2040a10785.png

Because presumably the revenue from selling those tickets at $1600 each far outweighs the cost risk they take of having to VDB passengers. In the case of OP, moving them onto the flight gets no incremental revenue, but still incurs additional cost of having to VDB.