Schedule Change, Drop leg possible?
 

Afternoon,

Wondering if someone would have any experience of this, AA customer service is giving different answers depending on what rep I speak to.

We are booked
LHR-MIA - BA connecting to MIA-MCO - AA
YYZ-LHR - BA

All through AA.com

The MIA-MCO leg with AA has been forward moved by 3 hours, Instead of departing MIA at 5:30p its now departing at 8:30p. We needed to be in MCO by 8 for accomodation purposes.

AA have offered seats on LHR-CLT-MCO but I have booked seats on BA which are allegedly non-refundable. Also the rigmarol of moving hotels and car parking from T5 to T3.

Is it within AA's remit to drop the leg MIA-MCO? One agent said yes, when I rang back I was told no. It'll be far easier for me to pick up a rental in MIA and drive to MCO rather than reorganise everything else and try to get a refund from BA.

Best Wishes,

Should be possible given the schedule change, I've done something similar once when the new schedule didnt work. HUCA.

Try calling again. AA policy permits changing your destination within 300 miles of the originally ticketed city when a schedule change is over an hour.

It sounds like an agent already said yes. Why didn’t you just do it on that call?

In general, when an agent gives me an answer I want in an iffy situation, I don’t risk it and HUCA hoping to get the same answer again. Take it when offered. ;)

I had to confirm with other family members on if they'd be happy to drive from MIA before I could say yes. It does seem after speaking to several agents and AA twitter the drop leg was really a no go. I have had to book the flights via CLT instead, although this does mean we get into MCO around 3 hours earlier than what we would have with our orginal connection. A little win I guess. Thanks for your help!

For future reference, I wouldn't frame it as "dropping a leg" but rather as "changing to another destination within 300 miles of the original destination due to the extended delay". The latter is a well known and long standing policy. The former might lead agents to think the ticket would need to be re-priced. That being said, the challenge here might be that the delay was less than 4 hours, which I think is the minimum for this policy to be applicable.

However, it seems like this worked out better in the end anyway.

Thanks very much for this, we do travel quite often with BA/AA so its very helpful if this situation arises in the future!

The message here is that (a) it never hurts to ask and (b) if you think that what you're asking for is reasonable and you don't get it, HUCA.

I once spoke to an AAGent who basically bragged to me that she would do almost anything to accommodate a pax.

When you bought the ticket on AA.com, are you BA code shares on AA, meaning ex LHR flights listed as AA 6nnnn or are the listed as BA native flight numbers