Canceled Air Tahiti Nui flight , award AA stock
 

Seeking an advice,please :

We have booked an AA award J ticket , PPT-NRT , 3 tickets , non stop flight for March . TN ( Air Tahiti Nui) are not restarting the flights till next fall . I emailed them with a kind request for rerouting :

TN PPT-LAX and JL LAX-PPT
or
TN PPT-SEA and JL SEA-PPT

TN and JL are codeshare partners ( alongside QF , AA and NZ)

They are denying the request due to AA stock ticket , are they right ?
Do I have any chance for rerouting at all either through TN or AA?

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...ac842f656.jpeg


or I should suck it up , get the miles refunded and figure out from there ?


Thank you !

Yes it’s correct that AA will need to handle the re-booking. But this is a well-known pitfall of award travel on partner airlines. You will normally be rebooked automatically at some point but for an “uncommon” routing there may not be anything reasonable. Further, AA has almost no ability to force other airlines to open award space for your rebooking (much easier to deal with on a cash paid ticket) so you may need to find an alternative that uses only TN and AA metal.

Of course a refund is always an option but that’s understandably not often ideal.

Thank you !

I see that the reservation completely disappeared from my account , though no miles are redeposited. When I type in the booking locator under my manage booking section does not recognize it.

How long does it take for AA to reroute automatically (if at all) ? The trip is in March .

For an award like PPT-NRT AA's system is not going to automatically rebook you.

And AA cannot force partners to open award space so it's no surprise they denied opening up space on JL, when it was TN's schedule change causing the issue.

Normally I would suggest HUCA amongst other things, however for such an outlier route like PPT-NRT, if TN is no longer operating the flight, there are no realistic alternatives other than just cancelling for a full refund and starting over.

I think in this situation you are not going to be re-routed.

AA can't force partners to open up space, and they will not buy a revenue ticket for you.
AA would open up J award space on its own metal to accommodate a partner cancelling flights. But AA does not service PPT so options are limited.

The only potential option I see is if you find TN space LAX-PPT, AA could force open J space on their own HND-LAX to get you from HND to PPT, so you dont need to try to find matching JL space. However, this would break the region rules of the award as you cannot transit through North America to get from Asia 1 to South Pacific. Hence I don't know if AA would make an exception. I personally wouldn't count on it.

You probably will need to call in for the redeposit. The segment is gone since it doesn't exist but I don't think the award will be automatically cancelled.

Thanks everyone!

I see award availability on TN flight PPT-SEA , 2seats in J , 1 in PE , then plenty of J availability from SEA to TYO with one stop , DFW with AA or LAX/SFO with JL.

To my understanding that’s my only recourse , right ?

You can certainly try calling AA if you see the award space and let us know how it goes.

I don't think you necessarily have "recourse" though for AA to reaccommodate you on these flights. AA's only true obligation here is to cancel & refund your ticket. Your options presented actually break 2 AA award rules if you wanted to go TYO-PPT on a single award: transiting through unallowed region, and potentially max permitted mileage (even TYO-SFO-SEA-PPT may break MPM).

TN has award availability in March only to SEA from PPT.

AA told me they could change the itinerary from PPT-NRT , to PPT-SEA (TN) , then SEA-NRT (JL) . The bad news is they are requiring 35k more miles per ticket . I will think about it for a day or two ( don’t
have the miles )

This is the kind of thing I would push back on with them and escalate to a supervisor. You seem to have gotten lucky with the “hard part” - finding an alternative routing with award space. As this was an involuntary schedule change, AA should not be trying to make an additional collection, regardless of the rules of the award. It’s the kind of thing that probably would merit filing a complaint with the DOT as a post-purchase fare increase, which is not allowed. Alternatively, maybe you can convince AA to provide you with 35k miles per traveler as a gooodwill gesture for the inconvenience. That’s a separate department but you never know…

If you're flying PPT-NRT, why would the DOT even be involved? It's a ticket from one non-US destination to another.

AA sold the ticket.

... in a foreign country. The DOT has authority to enforce its rules in a foreign country?

Who knows, but in this case DOT would be enforcing its rules here, against an airline incorporated and domiciled here, in relation to a ticket sold here to (presumably) a US resident. Strikes me as a pretty decent jurisdictional nexus. I suspect that AA couldn't, for example, begin flying fifth freedom routes that flout DOT rules.

Thanks everyone!


The offer with 35k extra miles was through a supervisor . That was the second call - the first one didn’t go anywhere because there was zero TN award availability for PPT-LAX.

A couple of things are striking me up :

- though there is zero award availability for JL SEA-NRT , the supervisor is offering to reroute on JL with 35k extra miles
- plenty of award availability on AA metal ( SEA-LAX-HND or SEA-DFW-HND) but they didn’t offer that at all ..

Your expectations to be rerouted back through the US were ridiculous, and all you should have been entitled to is a refund of your miles/taxes. To be given this routing for only 35K extra miles is also absurd, and it taking space away from paying J pax. AA failed its best customers here by taking valuable J space and giving it to you for free. No wonder I often have trouble buying last minute J.:td: