While most airline have eliminated the ability to put an award “on hold” one of the more consumer-friendly features of American AAdvantage has been the offer to hold an award for up to 5 days rather than having to purchase it immediately. (Travel within a week is limited to just one day.)

Without any announcement, American appears to have reduced the allowable hold time from 5 days to 3 days. I’ve reached out to American Airlines for comment.

Update: American thanked me for bringing the issue to their attention, and let me know they were looking into it. They are “still checking it out” but confirm that “the policy hasn’t changed.”

So I’d expect this issue to be fixed, and award holds to consistently be offered for 5 days when booking more than 14 days in advance.

Fifteen years ago AAdvantage offered 14 day holds, and it was possible to extend them.

Putting Awards On Hold Is A Valuable Feature

Holds are useful as they enable you to lock in a flight option, while working on the rest of your plans. You may need to coordinate travel with other people, or with hotel availability or non-daily flights on the ground at your destination.

You may need to transfer points in from a partner program, and wait for those points to post. You don’t want to make the transfer only to find that the space is gone (and the transfer cannot be reversed).

Partner awards can technically be changed under the rules. So you can keep the important segment you need while changing part of your trip. But finding an agent that is willing to do this – they’ve all been trained on the rules of American Airlines-only awards, and on journey control and are scared to make changes and get in trouble – is nearly impossible. So you have to have your entire trip locked before ticketing. If you book, and then cancel, some of the award space may not immediately become available again, or even at all.

Being able to put an award on hold is much better than just being able to cancel an award and redeposit point for free (and AAdvantage doesn’t always put your miles back right away, so you can book a new trip immediately, either).

Occasionally There Are Problems With Held Award Space On Partners

At times we’ve seen partner airlines reject held reservations. This was an issue with Cathay Pacific several years ago. Cathay would see the reservation unticketed, and cancel out the award space. American wouldn’t be able to easily restore it in most cases.

So maintaining a hold policy requires coordination with the policies and practices of partner airlines.

Customers Do Not Always Ticket Held Space, Or Even Cancel It

People put awards on hold, and then… abandon the space. While American Airlines doesn’t share conversion rates for held versus ticketed award travel, when Delta eliminated award holds they noted that it was very low. Not only don’t people eventually ticket, they do not cancel held awards when they realize they aren’t going to use the space either. And that takes up lowest-price award space that other customers might book.

There’s a logic to reducing 14 day holds (and at United, which no longer offers holds, from their once upon a time policy of 30 day holds which were extendable). I’m not sure what the logic of 5 days versus 3 days is.

Award Holds, The End Of An Era

Nearly all airlines used to let mileage redemption customers put awards on hold. Now very few do. In fact, American Airlines AAdvantage is the only U.S. airline that still permits it.

Cathay Pacific and Air France KLM still allow award holds of 3 days over the phone. Singapore Airlines is hit or miss on award holds. The only other airline I can think of which allows online holds for awards is EVA Air. And the only airline that offers 5 day award holds still is Lufthansa, as far as I know.

American is hardly out of step in reducing award holds to 3 days, and they even allow this online. They remain relatively generous – just less so than before – and they’ve reduced on of the consumer-friendly, ease-of-use advantages of the program.