American Airlines is eliminating the ability to put an award ticket on hold for five days, reducing allowable hold time to just one day.
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 offering to hold an award for up to 5 days rather than having to purchase it immediately. (Travel within a week has been limited to just a one day hold.)
American Airlines shares that today they are reducing the allowable hold time from 5 days to 1 day. Fifteen years ago AAdvantage offered 14 day holds, and it was possible to extend them. At least holds remain possible and haven’t been eliminated entirely.
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 after ticketing under AAdvantage 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 points for free (and AAdvantage doesn’t always put your miles back immediately, so you may have to wait to book a new trip).
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.
Cathay Pacific First Class
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 holds (and at United, which no longer offers holds, from their once upon a time policy of 30 day holds which were extendable).
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.
KLM Business Class
American is hardly out of step in reducing award holds to just a day, and they even allow this online. They remain relatively generous – just less so than before – and they’ve reduced one of the consumer-friendly, ease-of-use advantages of the program.
the hold feature is a nice perk. Even after booking I monitor flight costs. If there is a large award drop, I will place the ticket on hold, cancel the existing reservation and then book the held one. Just this past week it saved me 10,000 points on a flight. I have also upgraded in the past for less than the original ticket cost. The one day hold still works for me, though a two-day hold would have been better.
TIL I actually had no idea this feature existed at all, thanks for making me aware — can definitely see it’s benefits even at 1 day.
@Ron — Clever!
‘Wake me up… when (the devaluations) end.’
It was a nice benefit. And it still works, even if it’s reduced. Now more akin to 24-hour cancellation rules with most tickets, involving the USA, at least. Which made me think, which other countries (and airlines) have something similar. I recall BA, AC, LH, QF, QR (more of a hold before paying), SQ, and others do, but many do not, so if you accidentally mix up your dates or times (which happens, especially if you book separate tickets, cross the international date line, and happen to get confused by that), even mere minutes after purchase, oof, ya often gotta pay the change fees, etc.
I always thought it was a weird peculiarity of American’s system that an AA Advantage member thinking of paying cash for a given Basic Economy fare could place that ticket on hold for only 24 hours, while the same member booking a non-cash miles award for the same seat could lock in the seat and mileage pricing for 5 days. And this especially seemed odd given that the same BE seat, purchased by the same AA Advantage member for cash, could not be refunded if canceled, while that BE seat when purchased with miles was fully refundable. So this change isn’t especially surprising, though of course it’s disappointing. But the effect remains blunted by the refundability of the mileage-purchased seat. Though of course that benefit will probably be taken away sooner or later as well. As has been observed extensively here and elsewhere, these loyalty programs always seem to move from more to less customer friendly as time passes.
I find it very helpful when I find a good fare to be able to hold to make sure that the day/time works for me and those with whom I might visit or have a meeting – Actually just used the 5 day hold and took the tickets- we were just crazy busy and needing the extra few days was sooo helpful- glad AA still has the one day hold-
For all intents and purposes this makes holds about the same as ticketing then cancelling. Particularly with no notice this change is tough to see as positive. I guess we could go with the weak sauce “Could be worse” but when that’s what you’ve got you know things are bad.