AA in DUB's latest interpretation of a NA transcon flight
 

A friend of mine just emailed me with this predicament in London so I thought I'd share it with you guys here...

M bought a ticket AONE3 from CAI. Original routing CAI-LHR, where he's at now. Then continuing LHR-ORD-ATL-ORD-NYC-YVR-HKG-SIN.... But decided to change the routing to fly to YVR first (to visit me) and NY last. So he wanted to reissue the ticket with AA, LHR-YVR-JFK-ORD-ATL-MIA-NYC-HKG-SIN. JFK-HKG sector on AA flight number so as to give AA at least one international sector.

Guess what AA in LHR (DUB) told him? That only 1 transcon permitted YVR-JFK. And even though JFK-HKG is on one flight number with a stop in YVR, AA will consider that to be JFK-YVR-HKG even though he is not stopping in YVR and thus a '2nd' transcon is not permitted. They suggested he fly via NRT but that would impede on his 4 sectors within Asia already so he'd have to pay an extra charge for the extra NRT-HKG-SIN sector.. (he already has HKG-SIN-HKG-SIN-HKG on his original ticket). Or he could fly via LAX. But the whole point of flying out of JFK is so that he could fly with me as my ticket is already routed JFK-HKG.

No point arguing with AA, so I told my friend, to get ticket reissued at CX instead. Most importantly, change the JFK-HKG from AA flight number to CX. He might as well give the reveue to CX seeing that AA in DUB has a funny way of interpreting OWE rules!

They are wrong of course, and it sounds to me like a fairly crude attempt to get more revenue for AA by pushing him to fly on AA metal. In general, the best way to avoid that sort of stuff seems to be to go back to the airline whose stock the ticket is on. (But not if it's BA of course because they will charge you and extra GBP25 per change, so this may be a problem with CAI-issued tickets).

Hi christep, unfortunately, the ticket was issued by AA on AA stock. That was why my friend thought that he'd be safe going to AA when he booked the JFK-HKG on the AA flight number.

I suspect he dealt with someone rather junior in the ranking in th ticketing department, and he only knows so much on what to say at the ticketing desk. Alas I am not there with him otherwise I will stand my case.

I think the best bet is to go to CX to get the ticket reissued.