skunker

Trying to book a flight on AA.com that shows up on ITA and Orbitz as $168. I have some gift cards that I need to clear off, hence the sadistic need to use AA.com

AA.com shows the exact same flights as $377 (but others at $168). If I select the $377 itinerary it says the new price is $168. Great! Until I press continue and it gives me the fare is no longer available but still showing other itineraries at $168. Now if I select one of those, they all disappear and it says "There were no flights that matched your criteria." Really, no flights for SAN-SAT?

JDiver

What did they say when you called Web Services about this issue?

Kaneohe0850

I'm having the same problem booking a flight from HNL-SAN over the Christmas Holiday...DealFinder shows a reasonable RT fare of $533, but when I try to purchase I get an error message that the fare is not available! If I try doing a multicity search HNL-LAX-SAN and back, I find a great fare of $350, and of course that errors out too.
How does AA expect to sell seats and retain customers when they make it so difficult for us to give them our money? Ugh!

DBCme

Had this problem for about a 3-day period SFO-SAO -
it was a relatively last minute work trip and I could never get AA to price out a dang itinerary - it always gave the message "no longer available" - thru clicking all the flights. Same problem each day.

In the end, had to go with *A flights as our funders just needed an itinerary with a price tag on it to approve the flight.Was hoping to make the transition back to OW!

SFO777

Had the same problem as well last week when I was trying to book a few of my MRs. I could buy/hold OWs at the low price, but not on the RTs. Had to call the EXP desk to manually book the RTs at the lower fare.

JohnnyColombia

I think I am having a slightly different problem to you guys

I am able to complete my booking right up to processing my card transaction, it says it is processing the payment THEN says the flights are unavailable

I am buying LAN flights on AA though, you guys are probably buying AA flights. I called AA and they said (in their own words) AA doesn't sell LAN flights

skunker

After 30 minutes on the phone they were able to book it, but I didn't get to use my gift cards. Oh well, there will be more flights.

hillrider

I suggest taking a video and posting it on YouTube. This is definitely sloppy programming which transmuted into a deceiving trade practice.

ExpatExp

This sort of problem happens to me all the time, no matter what browser, operating system or type of Internet connection I use. Usually, if I wait a few hours and try again, the problem disappears.

In those few situations where the fare is quite low and I want to book the ticket immediately, I will give Web Services a call. Even though I know it won't help, they always make me clear cache and cookies, restart the browser, and try again. Then when that isn't successful, they give it a go themselves. Only when the transaction fails on their own machines will they attempt to make the booking and force the price. It always takes a while.

If it helps, the only "trick" that sometimes helps is to make the booking without being logged in. But that only seems to work some of the time.

brp

None of these till help because, as mentioned, it is a poor programming issue. Their front end and back end systems don't communicate well. In these cases, from what I've been told, the fare really is not available. The front end just takes a while (sometimes a long while) to get the message. So, it reports the fare being available, then the back end says "nope." This simply should not be happening.

I've also had them tell me that it happens more with partner inventory, and they don't get the updates in a timely fashion. Well, your back end knows about this with just one more click, so apparently you do have the information. Why don't you sync your interface and database better? Imagine if a bank did that?

With multi-city, it can be yet a different issue. There are married segment rules that price higher than the individual segments. That's a real fare and shows up that way with a regular booking. When you try multi-city and pick the individual flights, it can show the lower fare, until one tries to price, then it applies the real rules. This one doesn't bug me as much since it only shows up when one is trying to circumvent the real fare. The first one, though, is just very poor.

Cheers.

Global_Hi_Flyer

While I agree with BRP about the programming issue that AA needs to fix, I do want to note that *compared to DL*, AA is a saint in this regard. DL is just horrid for this, including changing a fare that it permitted on the confirmation screen to a much ($1000) higher fare on the payment screen. DL is the worst in this regard.

maat777

I've had this problem a number of times. Seems to be when trying to click through on multi-city itineraries. And like a previous post or two, when I remove a certain city the problem goes away. Most recently, I was having a very hard time getting anything in or out of PDX to price as advertised. The deceiving thing in this is that while I understand the price may go up for some crazy reason (inventory sapped up before I click purchase) it should not then go back down when I exit and repeat the exact same search.

AA needs to step up and fix this issue.

janetdoe

I noticed that this happens a lot when the inventory levels are low (e.g. one seat left in that fare bucket) or a sale is about to end.

My solution is usually to go to Orbitz, find the low fare with "Only 1 seat left", take a screenshot, then buy the AA ticket at the higher price. Then you can immediately submit a BRG claim and get the lower rate plus an extra $50 for your trouble.

If enough people do it, maybe they will fix the bugs.

skunker

I don't know what the problem was with my particular fare; however, it does not appear to be a routing issue. The Q-fare for SAN-SAT allows the following routes
I was trying for the second to take advantage of DEQM.
I did notice after it was ticketed that the Eagle flights are booked in N while the mainline is booked in Q. So, it could be a "partner" airline issue.
And, it's hard to submit a BRG claim when you can't even purchase the ticket on AA.com.

hillrider

So what? This is not the DL forum. I am sure there are far worse website/practices than DL's as well.