saaveraward

Part of the "AAdvantage" of having all these miles and with the new award cancellation policies is that you can make speculative bookings, especially in this challenging environment where flights are always getting canceled.

I put 2 awards on hold on different flights on the same day. AA canceled one of them and now the price is 3x on the one they canceled.

Interesting enough, I ticketed 2 flights to the same destination on the same day and those are still standing.

I'm not blaming AA for doing this.

But I would like to be given a choice between flight #1 and flight #2 instead of one of them getting randomly whacked.

Is there a strategy where your tickets aren't going to get whacked? Do I now need to worry about TICKETED flights getting canceled?

JJeffrey

AA has always had this policy, if you have overlapping AA flights on the same day that are on hold then the computer will typically cancel one of them.

Flights that are ticketed (not on hold) are not affected.

Duplicate, impossible and illogical bookings on AA (master thd)

saaveraward

good to know. Had no idea that hold vs ticketed mattered. Thanks!

javabytes

You are misunderstanding the flexible booking policy. Free changes and reinstatements are intended to offer flexibility but are not a license to tie up space with bookings you have no intention of using. For example if you book two overlapping flights for the same passenger, it is clear that at least one of them will never be used because it is impossible to be in two places at once. This is not allowed even if you don’t know which of the two cities you might want to travel to. Similarly, if you were to go out and book dozens of tickets for travel on different days and then cancel them all last minute, you can bet you’ll be hearing from the revenue protection folks.

Even if you ticket the overlapping reservations, they may or may not find them and cancel one but you are still at risk.

The more people that abuse the flexibility, the sooner it will go away.

Collierkr

As they should.

saaveraward

I'm not starting an ethics debate. If AA wants to give free cancel and redeposit and blogs like VFTW say you should make speculative bookings, then I have no problem with it as long as I'm in compliance with program rules. Yes, I can't be in two places at once. But how am I supposed to know which flight is going to get canceled thanks to management? And once it gets canceled, they won't book you on another flight. It's tough luck. By that time, a 57.5k flight could become a 400k flight. I've earned my miles and should have the ability to use them. If there's a written policy saying I can't book a trip to Paris on 3 consecutive dates, then I won't. If I'm not allowed to book 2 tickets to Paris on the same day, then I won't.

TravelerMSY

Easy. You don’t make duplicate or impossible for the same day(s). They’re generous with speculative bookings in the sense of “I want to go to Paris next month but I may not go” but not “my vacation is next month and I’m going to book Paris and Tokyo simultaneously and decide later.”

Every carrier does this. Some are just better about enforcing it than others. I sort of recall AA logic canceling the older of the two duplicates, and keeping the newer one.

The written policy is in the contract of carriage, but not the details of the algo for batch deletion. In my experience, if you can fly both, it will generally leave you alone. There’s a long boring thread about this somewhere else on Flyertalk with data points if you want to see what you’re likely to be able to get away with.

javabytes

It’s not an ethics debate. You are prohibited from holding duplicate/overlapping reservations, whether on hold or ticketed, and whether they find them or not. Your indecision on your travel plans is not AA’s burden.

If you want to get technical on written policy, the AAdvantage program T&C’s also give AA wide latitude to terminate your AAdvantage account, void tickets, and outright refuse to transport you for what they deem to be fraud, misrepresentation, abuse, or violation of applicable rules. AA has a known history of pursuing egregious abuses. Keep poking the bear as many times as you feel lucky.

AAExecPlatFlier

Something tells me that AA has implemented some sort of “extended check” that goes beyond same day (and and any connecting day).

had a call from AA regarding two ticketed itineraries that did not overlap — 4 days away from each other. The message asked me to call and pick one as the “partner. Pups cancel one randomly”

writerguyfl

The ethics debate started the instant you published this thread. This topic inherently involves ethical decisions because you are depriving another person from booking a flight they actually want and will use.

saaveraward

Typical AA folder responses... I asked what the deal was with something I didn't know. Someone explained it. I thanked them. I learned something. I literally said if something wasn't allowed, I wouldn't do it... and then the AA folder wolves come out. Give me a break. I've done five-day holds for years on successive days/flights until my travel is firmed up. Once I know what flight I'm going to take I ticket it and drop the holds. I'll put something on hold for two hours while I work out positioning flights, interline baggage agreements and MCT. If I can't swing it, I drop the hold. With the program changes, I've done more ticketing because there's no cancellation penalty now and there's great odds something I ticketed is going to get taken out of the schedule. If you have a problem with AA policy and you don't like five-day holds or the ability to cancel a ticket without penalty, then I suggest you complain to AA or go earn miles in a more restrictive program. Meanwhile, I canceled any overlapping/successive tickets.

bomberman92

First time using AA miles and was unaware of this rule -- system ended up canceling the preferred booking that was on hold.

However, the same flight no longer shows up in award search even though the hold was canceled. Is there a general rule of thumb around when flights from canceled holds are re-listed?

JJeffrey

There's no rule of thumb and there's never been a guarantee that the seat will open back up as award space when you cancel an award flight.

redtop43

How nice of AA to prevent pax from tying up space with bookings they have no intention of using, but AA will sell tickets on flights they have no intention of flying.

LHSEN

What I have found rather „strange“ the past 2 weeks is that I‘ve made 2 1-way booking (if you combined it would be an open jaw) on different departure dates, but one of them (quite random) gets cancelled automatically before the holding period expires i.e. cancelled like 2 days after I‘ve put them on hold. This happened 3x already … now I have to keep checking everyday and see what they randomly cancelled. This seems to be some bugs in the system.