Often when booking an award ticket I need to buy positioning flights. Not everything may be available on points, whether from my starting city or for the last segment. I’d hate to give up a beautiful Cathay Pacific award ticket in first class, Chicago or New York JFK to Hong Kong, just because I couldn’t get the flight from DC to Chicago or New York. So I’m willing to come out of pocket to buy that segment.
Similarly with British Airways Avios, they charge you separately for each and every flight segment you book using points. So you might have enough for the flight from New York to Europe but not the flight to reach New York. So you have to pay for the with cash.
You’re still saving a lot of money by just purchasing a short domestic hop. It may make good sense to use miles. Even though you don’t get the entire portion of your air trip covered in a single award.
One risk, though, is what happens if your flight is delayed or cancelled? You’re on two separate tickets. Say you’re supposed to go to Hong Kong, and your flight from DC to New York gets delayed. It could be summer storms in the Northeast, or just air traffic congestion around New York. And you miss that Cathay Pacific flight?
If you’re on one ticket, then the airline that delayed you is responsible for getting you to your final destination. But what about separate tickets?
Usually the rule of thumb is that the airline is only responsible for getting you to the destination on that ticket. In this case, New York. And you’ll have missed your flight to Hong Kong, you can try to reschedule your award ticket, but you could well be out of luck if no award space is available later.
That’s why traveling on separate tickets can be risky. And why I’ve both been lucky and cautious — when I’m on separate tickets I’ll often leave a huge buffer in place — several hours extra to account for delays, and when possible I’ll even make sure there’s another non-stop that could get me to my international gateway in case my flight is cancelled. I really don’t want to miss the start of that award ticket!
Similarly, if my trip terminates in Chicago and I’m buying onward travel to DC, I’d leave plenty of room for a misconnect, I’d hate to arrive in Chicago too late to connect to my scheduled flight home and be stuck buying a walkup full fare ticket (or booking a brand new award, for instance on another airline).
Except… I just learned something new today. With thanks to abk, American actually publishes a policy I wasn’t aware of: if the two separate tickets are both on oneworld airlines, and the onward flights are also on a ticket issued by a oneworld carrier, then the journey will be treated as though it were on a single ticket. In the event of misconnect, “the carrier responsible for the disruption will be required to reroute the customer to their final destination.”
AA to/from AA or a oneworld® Carrier
If a customer is holding separate tickets on AA or another oneworld carrier, customers holding separate tickets where travel is on oneworld airlines should be treated as through ticketed passengers. In the event of a disruption on the originating ticket, the carrier responsible for the disruption will be required to reroute the customer to their final destination. The ticket stock of the second ticket must be of a oneworld carrier, eligible under the Endorsement Waiver Agreement. You may contact AA Reservations 1-800-433-7300 (U.S. and Canada) or outside the U.S. and Canada, reference Worldwide Reservations Numbers for additional information if the separate ticket is for travel on a oneworld carrier.
This policy does not apply where one of the airlines involved is not a oneworld airline, or when the second ticket was issued by a non-oneworld airline.
It does tell me that I’ll be more comfortable booking separate tickets when redeeming miles with a oneworld airline, and incentivized to choose the oneworld airline for the second ticket (e.g. I have a reason to buy a DC-Chicago connection on American rather than United).
It may seem a minor thing to a large chunk of blog readers, but this struck me as a pretty big deal for the small number of times a year that I might use this information. And it was news to me.
I wish I had known this fact when traveling to/from Asia a couple weeks ago. I had a separate ticket to get me from SLC to LAX on AA than my CX flights for the rest of the trip. Even with sound planning I was a little worried about misconnects, especially given the small number of AA flights on that route, but luckily everything worked out.
One question. Will the airlines accommodate you in the class of service of your original ticket, or just “get you” to your destination?
Nice benefit! Will definitely keep that in mind now that I am a newly minted EXP.
Excellent information – thanks for sharing!
I had ticket recently from DFw to FRA on AA and then on Etihad from FRA to Abu Dhabi. Delays in Dallas caused me to miss my connection in FRA and I was met at the gate in FRA by an AA agent with a ticket on Lufthansa to Abu Dhabi. Could not have been more pleased with how AA handled it.
This is very helpful to know! Thank you for sharing this.
If the agent is not aware of this, is there somewhere in their system where we can lead them to this policy?
Do you know of any such policy with Star Alliance? It sure would be nice if there were one. I have a few trips coming up that make me nervous.
Very informative! Thank you!
This is something AA does not seem to know at all.
I flew DSM-ORD-JFK and got stranded in ORD due to bad weather. This was a domestic award with miles from my kids acct (to empty it out) I was then booked JFK-MAD-CAI and lost the connection. I was forced to beg them for help and they grudgingly put me in economy ORD-AMM-CAI after telling me that it was my fault and they were not responsible!
They refused to refund miles and told me that it was only their obligation to get me to CAI as a courtesy as I did not make my flight in JFK!!
Like Christa: Do any *A carriers have a similar policy?
I have booked paid AA segments + AA award segments on the same AA ticket before. Maybe you could do the same for paid AA segments + OW award segments?
@christa i do not…
@SW you do see that i provided a link to the AA website, right? 🙂
This is very good to know! Not being hub-based I often run into the problem of needing a positioning flight if I can’t get award space on a connection – especially with AA which only has RJ service here and fewer seats available to begin with, IME. Depending on the timing and availability of alternate flights, we sometimes will make the positioning flight the night before rather than take a chance.
Is this an AA policy or a one world policy, as you have titled the post?
In other words, if connecting say BA to CX, will the same policy apply?
On the outbound gateway flight, i always build an overnight just in case. So if my award departs on Friday, I will depart for the gateway on Thursday. Costs a bit more with lodging and that sort of thing, but helps me sleep better.
Does all OW carriers honor this policy? or just AA?
Very interesting and positive. Amazingly enough I was able to receive great treatment from UA in a similar situation 6 months ago: I had a ticket on UA from DC to Moscow and had a seperate ticket on EL-AL from Moscow to TLV. I thought I left enough room between flights but the UA flight was delayed by 5 hours!
Eventually I got them to put me on the EWR-TLV nonstop – there was only Y fare left on that flight – but they agreed:)! – ALLWAYS talk to a supervisor…..
here is the policy:
http://www.aa.com/i18n/agency/Booking_Ticketing/Reaccom/oneworld_tkt_policy.jsp
@D indeed, that’s what i linked to in my post 🙂
Gary the linked policy is for AA to/from AA or OW but my question is other OW carriers to/from other OW carriers
Unless I’m missing something?
Thanks
5 million miles in AAs program and I’m still learning!
Well done Gary!Thanks for the heads up
I had been told otherwise by BA
So what does “eligible under the Endorsement Waiver Agreement” mean?
It means one of the carriers the airline has an agreement with to carry passenger in the event they are unable to. That list is almost alway s extensive for the big carriers so it means even if the airline isn’t one of their partners you are in.
Best example is which airlines they will let you use if they cancel permanently a destination. AA and UA obviously aren’t partners but I bet they have a deal to carry each other’s passengers in this situation.
@thrashsoundly – I don’t think they have to keep your class of service if that class was obtained by an upgrade – but I am not certain. I have lost an upgrade (LHR-DFW) before due to a IRROPS issue. Can anyone else answer @thrashsoundly’s question factually?
I went to reference the above AA weblink to AA today and the page on the AA website has disappeared. I’m now fighting desperately to get them me from JFK to HKG after my flight from CUN was cancelled. They’re not helping.