AA Awards Changeable?
 

Are AA awards changeable now? I just noticed that if I click on an award flight I have booked in the APP, it will now let me change it without having to cancel and rebook. Is this new or just some sort of glitch?

Edited: Changed not to now. Changes the who meaning of what I wrote. Sheesh.

AA on AA awards are non changeable, you must cancel and rebook.
If it is an AA on non AA award then it is changeable, but you may need to HUCA.

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...338ec2bc84.png
https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...303062de50.png

That is definitely a new functionality at aa.com. However it's really no different than cancel/rebook, just making the change in what appears to be one transaction instead of two. The end result is the same though.

The functional difference between a change and a cancel and rebook is that a change doesn't require existing award inventory if you only want to change part of your existing itinerary, a cancel and rebook requires availability for your whole itinerary.

For AA bookings, there's likely always availability at a higher price point, so functionally cancel and rebook is always going to be available and show - it'll just charge you more miles (as is visible on your screenshot).

It's just not really a "change", per se.

I noticed this too and utilized it last week. It's nice! I found it annoying to cancel then rebook. I was always paranoid the rate would change in the 2 minutes it took to do that :p

I don't really understand what you are saying, but I will take your word for it.

It looks like they still have some bugs to work out. That first one in the screen shot should be an even exchange (and it is if you click on it). +10k is for F. The other two are correct for Y.

Plus, now you don't have to pay $5.60 and wait several days for AA to refund your previous $5.60.

Say you have a booking JFK-LHR-ZRH in J, you've booked the last seat on the plane. You now want to change this flight to JFK-LHR-MUC. A "change" would let you keep your existing JFK-LHR and just change LHR-ZRH to LHR-MUC. A "cancel and rebook" would require existing inventory for JFK-LHR, so probably wouldn't show up in your change screen because it's currently sold out (since you booked the last seat).

If that makes sense.

I'm guessing that this update is only applicable to AA-only awards and only those that are domestic only.

I have an AA-only award in 2 weeks on RDU-CLT-MUC and just tried to change it online just to see and it still says I need to call AA like always

And the change you mention (changing LHR-ZRH to LHR-MUC without losing JFK-LHR) has always been possible as it's a partner award, I just did a similar change 2 weeks ago, but you have to call. But in the current state of AA reps it may take 2 or 3 HUCA's as many reps just tell you "no changes are allowed" to any and all awards.

Maybe this update will force some kind of re-training on some of these agents...