I have an upcoming Qantas flight in J for next month, ticketed and marketed by American. I've been keeping an eye on the flight price since booking, and today I noticed that the fare dropped ~$400/pp.

As usual, I tried to chat with AA to get a Trip Credit for the fare difference, but the agent I got insisted that it wasn't possible to make changes to the reservation, since it was supposedly under Qantas's airport control. I was able to reprice this reservation previously with an agent who was able to contact the "Oneworld� helpdesk" to "remove the control status" and refare the tickets, but this agent refused to try that avenue, claiming that they're restricted on what they can request from the helpdesk.

Does anyone have any insights as to what was going on here? I'm not sure how a flight a month away could possibly be under airport control. I did add contact info and assign seats on Qantas's website; is this what caused American to lose control of the reservation? I'm annoyed that American could be unable to make changes to a 001 ticket with only AA flight numbers.

I was able to get around this by making a duplicate booking, putting it on hold, cancelling the original reservation for Trip Credit, and using said Trip Credit to pay for the reservation on hold.

Without knowing exactly what fare you have purchased it is hard to compare vs fare rules - Given the non refundability, I assume that it isnt booked in 'J'' since the cheaoest J fares that I see seem to be refundable

Looking at the cheapest business class r/t from LAX-SYD , it indicates non refundable but changes permitted
With a change , where there is a lower fare, there can be a refund of the difference
A change is defined with the statement "A CHANGE IS A ROUTING / OR DATE / OR FLIGHT MODIFICATION."

That would read to me that you would need to be making a change in order to take advantage of the lower fare - did you try changing to another date with the lower fare available and then doing a change back to the original flight

There isn't anything that I see in the rules that just provides a reimbursement if the fare drops

This is just opinion on what would seem to be possible to lead to the situation rather than definitive

Yes, it is indeed I, not J. Trying to change the trip on aa.com just gives me an error page, but it's worked for other itineraries with American.

The procedure to reprice a ticket with American has always been "cancel the ticket, apply the Flight Credit generated toward a new ticket, and receive the residual balance as a Trip Credit" behind the scenes, even if it feels more seamless (and even the "change, and change back" approach generates new ticket numbers). I just usually prefer doing it over chat or phone; it's less cumbersome and feels less error-prone than making the new reservation myself and cancelling the old one, and it preserves the PNR, passenger documents, and seat assignments. (It is more time-consuming to do it with an agent rather than on my own, though).

There is nothing in the current fare rules that indicates the storing of credit for a cancellation - it only refers to a refund where a change gives a lower price

Changing date twice would meet the fare rule requirements , whilst just asking for a refund doesnt seem to

maintaining the same record locator would occur when just simply changing dates anyway