How to get AA to release seats to A?
 

American tends to keep A and D inventory zero'd on some of its flights more or less permanently. Does anyone have any success stories on getting a couple of A (or D) seats pried loose on a flight (two months hence) showing F7/A0?

Nope (presume you are looking at LAX-JFK route). These are released the day before some days, at the gate on other days. They often have walkup full F (P) fares -- for those last minute David Letterman show appearances. Most likely you'll have to fly standby.

This has been posted before and has worked for me many times. Call the AA RTW desk and ask them to put you on a WaitList for A Class. Then ask that it be queued to yield management. They have a special agent who deals with RTW requests for A Class vs upgrades into A Class.

I have only been denied once on a f2 a0 iad -lax flight.

What flight are you looking to book, btw.

rich

[This message has been edited by RichLond (edited 06-11-2003).]

Thanks for the advice - I'll see if I can make it work. The flight(s) in question are AA68 DFW-MIA and the flight onward to BGI, the weekend before Christmas.

I was on the waitlist for three months for A, on DFW-ANC but it did clear eventually.
When CX cancelled JFk-HKG last week, they could not get me in to A from JFK-LAX and offered to book me in to Coach. Instead I took EWR-LAX which is a much inferior product but did not want to face 6 hours in Coach.
A availability seems to be a bit of a problem.

Too bad about that - it's a bit of a blemish on an otherwise reasonably flyer-friendly airline. It's so different from how all the other OW carriers behave with respect to A availability that at least a curmudgeon like me is offended.

I think you are seeing AA's famed yield management software coming into play. It is very easy to get A availability on some routes, impossible on others -- and the hard ones are exactly the ones where they are able to sell high-revenue tickets. I doubt any of it is accidental, or they ran out of letters and had to use A for multiple purposes (instead it was convenient for their yield management).

Under the circumstances they should have protected you in F. I am surprised they didnt. What happens if they have to protect you on an airline without A class? Send you in cargo?

Absolutely right!!!! My guess is that they treated it as a reissue of the OWE ticket and waived the change fee! I saw QF do that to someone in LAX and intervened -- they were going to send the poor person by coach LAX-JFK when lots of 3-class F available but no A (and it was a mis-connect due to late arrival into LAX). Agent was very miffed at me for giving the other passenger advice (and causing them much work as well as costing QF some money), so much so that they pulled up my profile (presumably to annotate with some nasty comments). Then their tone changed, and service became much better. Got me curious what exactly it says there (I have no idea, I am not CL but do fly a fair bit, mostly in paid F).
I wonder if this is routine or airlines do it deliberately? I had a re-route by one OW airline onto another OW airline that was incorrectly prepared and the receiving airline was convinced that it was deliberate (to deprive them of some revenue); luckily they fought it out behind the scenes and I wasn't affected. OW is an "armed truce" kind of alliance at times.

I think the fact of the matter is that AA does use A for multiple purposes: RTW fares, perhaps some other discounted first class fares, and upgrades from business to first. I think it's probably right to say AA "ran out of letters" -- or didn't think about this problem when letters were being assigned to functions, and now it's hard enough to change that they prefer to stick with what they've got.

Well, if that's the case (and internally at AA, everyone admits it) it should be easy to get a supervisor to release A seats to an OWE itinerary, as suggested above. I'll give it a try.

I could find no one in AA in UK, or US who would release a single seat in to A for me. They may be able to do it, but they won't - or perhaps it was just me!

the only way i have been able to get A seats released is to call the AA RTW desk directly. The will send it to an analyst and in my case a call back 24 hours later reveals a yes answer. The time it was a no answer nothing was placed in the record.

rich

Curiously, I had no problem getting A seats on exactly the flights I wanted for:
DFW-ANC-DFW-ORD-LAX in a couple of weeks time
(and D on YVR-DFW).

This was just a pure reservation by my TA, although as it happens I am using a DONE3.

It's just certain markets (and perhaps seasonal) where AA leaves the flight showing A0 forever. The Caribbean around the Christmas holidays, for instance.