platbrownguy

This is a new one. I bought three tickets BOS-JFK-DEL-JFK-BOS, for myself + wife + 3yo. A few days later, I needed to change the dates, but I couldn't change it online (error message), so I canceled (and immediately received three trip credits) and went to book the new reservation with the trip credits. As a bonus, the fare had even dropped $100/person--great.

AA.com tells me I can't apply trip credits, so I put the res on hold and call up. First agent says "I can't apply trip credits because it is blocked; do you want me to split the record and try one at a time?" (um, of course I don't want to split a 3-year-old onto a separate record to India). Agent transfers me to a support person of some sort who seems utterly inept. He says that the problem is there's a child, and you can't apply trip credits to children. I say "that's news to me, I've done it before," but he comes back with something about how it's a child fare. I say "okay, but it's the same price as the adult fare, and nothing on AA.com says I can't use trip credits for a child, so what am I supposed to do with these thousands of dollars in trip credits?" He transfers me (back?) to the EXP desk where three times a charm and the agent removes the kid's birthdate, processes everything, emails me the residual $300 trip credit, and then adds the kid's AA info and birthdate back in. She apologized for the run-around, but evidently this is a known glitch.

I was surprised that I had never run into this before. I figured I'd come here to post the story in case others run into it in the future. (Moral: HUACA.)

Dave Noble

The moral seems to be that if wanting to make a change that cannot be done online is to just phone and do change over the phone

GNRMatt

No, the moral of the story is that there is a bug in AA's booking system when it comes to this type of ticketing. And the workaround is to remove the child's birthdate to allow them to book the ticket and then change it after booking to what it should be. I'm going to guess most agents would not know this and may need to be walked through the steps, so this is great information for anyone that encounters this unique situation.

FAA1996

The moral of this story is the title of the thread needs to be changed...

platbrownguy

Why? As far as I can tell, you cannot use a Trip Credit for a "child ticket" (which, best I can tell, is a concept applicable only to international travel). It was nearly an hour on the phone to fix the situation, which, as far as I can tell, required ticketing the passenger as an adult (in order to apply the Trip Credit) and then changing the DOB after.

PHL

If you canceled 3 tickets, you should have wound up with 3 FLIGHT credits. TRIP credits, which you each should have gotten $100 for the reduced fare after rebooking, might be handled differently with respect to kids. I would agree the title should more descriptive of the issue/resolution.

AndyAA

Is flight credit still a thing anymore? I thought all that went away, and now we get trip credit for cancellations, good for 1 year from the date the flight was cancelled for AAdvantage members.

S80

It is, the credit system still can't handle some weird tickets. I still get them when cancelling a trip booked with credit, and then they become impossible to use online (always need to call/chat in), so I typically only book flights with credit when I'm more than sure I'll actually be taking the flight as booked.

platbrownguy

Seriously?

Correcting people with ALL CAPS NONSENSE is not particularly useful. AA has generally issued Trip Credits rather than the less easily usable Flight Credits the past couple years. I received three Trip Credits (for the full ticket price) when I canceled the three tickets initially. And when I was ultimately able to use the credits to book the new tickets, I received a single $300 Trip Credit for the balance. I do 100+ AA segments a year with a pretty high rate of changes, and I haven't had a Flight Credit in a very long time.

cmtlatitudes

Flight Credits are still around. I just had one that converted to a Trip Credit in January.

Aa has not been consistent about how they are released or applied.

While I disliked the complexity of using them, over the more straightforward trip credits, to me they were much more versatile than flight credits.