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Guide: Infant / lap child fares & fees for AA travel, including award & upgrades

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Guide: Infant / lap child fares & fees for AA travel, including award & upgrades

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Old Aug 11, 19, 2:45 am   -   Wikipost
Please read: This is a community-maintained wiki post containing the most important information from this thread. You may edit the Wiki once you have been on FT for 90 days and have made 90 posts.
  
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Infant / lap child fares and fees on international travel, including award & upgrades

N.B.: This thread is restricted to discussion of AA (and AA awards, upgrades) ticketing rules for infants. Please do not use this thread to discuss opinions on safety issues associated with travel with lap children versus infants with their own purchased seats. Those discussions should be carried out in the

Travel with Children forum, where many opinions have been shared and are welcome. Thank you for your cooperation.


On AA there is no charge for a lap child on domestic flights. In most instances for international travel the cost will be 10% of the adult fare in the cabin of travel (be aware in some instances / on some other airlines, it can be 25% of the cost of an adult ticket). From aa.com:

Are you traveling with an infant?

Passengers are considered infants if aged over 2 days and less than 2 years at the beginning of their journey. To travel with an infant, you must be an adult passenger aged 16 or older. Adults can travel with up to two infants and in these circumstances, can purchase an additional seat at a child fare.

Although infants can travel as early as 2 days after birth, you'll need to provide a medical certificate for infants traveling within 7 days after birth. Please contact Reservations for more information.

On U.S. domestic flights:

Infants not occupying a seat travel for free. If you prefer to book a seat for your infant, a child fare will apply.

You must call AA on the phone to add a lap infant to an existing reservation. The lap infant will NOT appear in the online reservation and receipt.

Travelers with a lap infant may check in online, for domestic flights only, and the boarding pass will be annotated with the words "WITH INFANT" immediately after the traveler's name.

On international flights:

Infants not occupying a seat benefit from a 90% discount on most adult fares

If your infant turns 2 during your trip, we'll provide you with a complimentary seat on the return flight. If the return journey is not on American Airlines, please contact the other airline to check if a seat must be purchased. (Infants and children must provide passports with any required visas; all children not traveling with both parents may be required to have a Letter of Consent signed by both parents.)

You must call AA on the phone to add a lap infant to an existing reservation, and will need to pay the fare at that time. The lab infant and fare WILL appear in the online reservation and receipt.

Travelers with a lap infant may NOT check in online for international flights and must check in at the airport.

NOTE: AA will not generally block a complimentary spare seat to be used by an infant or lap child. If seats are available at the airport, it might be possible to be assigned seating to include an adjacent empty seat if the flight will depart with sufficient empty seats.

Bassinets: These are portable, not bulkhead fastened, floor bassinet boxes. Not all aircraft may offer these, and generally are restricted to bulkhead seats.

See the bassinet thread here."]here[/URL].

See more here on aa.com.

For AA policies on required documentation for children, see here.

and

This thread regarding the use - and prohibition, on some aircraft - child safety seats.

For older threads on this topic, see:

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Old Jun 22, 22, 10:27 am
  #331  
 
Join Date: Feb 2013
Location: Vancouver, WA
Posts: 58
Originally Posted by Dave Noble View Post
It matters ; he is doing something wrong if he is acting against company policy.

If it isn't company policy, then there is an ussue with other staff

There should be consistent and correct application all the time - not just on a game of agent roulette
After many calls with AA and QR, I am very sure (but I don't know for a fact) that only QR can add the lap infant to an award ticket and that the issue is QR's customer service agents. This was also confirmed by Alaska when I booked another award ticket on Qatar which I didn't end up taking.
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Old Jun 22, 22, 3:13 pm
  #332  
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Join Date: Jan 2002
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Originally Posted by ericande View Post
After many calls with AA and QR, I am very sure (but I don't know for a fact) that only QR can add the lap infant to an award ticket and that the issue is QR's customer service agents. This was also confirmed by Alaska when I booked another award ticket on Qatar which I didn't end up taking.
I am pretty sure that ony QR can. If nearly all the agents are saying that it is not something that they can do, it could well be that that is QR policy and the agents that are the problem are the ones that actually issued a ticket,

There should be a consistent response from agents
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Old Jun 23, 22, 8:27 am
  #333  
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Join Date: Jan 2013
Location: California
Programs: AA EXP 2MM, HH DIA, Hertz PC, GE + Pre✓, Amazon Super Special Prime
Posts: 853
A rather vanilla data point:

2 separate domestic awards - going and coming back. Called EXP desk this morning to add lap infant, after booking tickets last night.
Agent was super helpful and got the lap infant added on, as well as cross referenced our outbound and return record locators for future use.

No charge since it was domestic. Done in all of 8 minutes, spent more time on hold than talking to him.
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Old Jun 23, 22, 2:01 pm
  #334  
 
Join Date: Jul 2008
Location: DCA
Programs: AA PLT 1MM (bitter former EXP), WOH Explorist
Posts: 769
Originally Posted by jtav559 View Post
A rather vanilla data point:

2 separate domestic awards - going and coming back. Called EXP desk this morning to add lap infant, after booking tickets last night.
Agent was super helpful and got the lap infant added on, as well as cross referenced our outbound and return record locators for future use.

No charge since it was domestic. Done in all of 8 minutes, spent more time on hold than talking to him.
FYI you can do this yourself on the website or app. It takes all of 8 seconds!
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Old Jun 26, 22, 8:47 am
  #335  
 
Join Date: Jul 2008
Location: DCA
Programs: AA PLT 1MM (bitter former EXP), WOH Explorist
Posts: 769
No BP in app, but mobile BP works fine
One quirky thing I've noticed the past couple months flying quite a bit with a lap infant: you can't view/obtain a boarding pass using the app, yet it's no problem to check in online and have a mobile BP emailed to you.

​​​​​
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