American Airlines Makes Same-Day Flight Changes Miserable — United And Delta Are Far More Generous

One reader wrote to me very frustrated by the American Airlines process for making ‘same day confirmed’ changes. The airline allows you to change your flight to another one on the same day starting at $60 but free for members with Platinum Pro AAdvantage status and higher (and Alaska Platinums and above) as well as passengers on full fare coach tickets. They do not make it easy.

This is not standby and you’re not waiting at the gate. If same day confirmed changes are available, you are rebooked on yor new preferred flight. However,

• You have to fly the same number of stops (you can’t go from a non-stop to a connecting flight, or vice versa) and if you are connecting you cannot change the city you connect in. American has the largest domestic route network, but they don’t let passengers benefit from that.

• There has to be “E” inventory on the flight available. Just because there are open seats doesn’t mean they’ll let you confirm the flight.

And it’s particularly challenging to do a same day confirmed change if you’re flying first class, which is especially perverse. Here’s the problem the reader has,

I’ve noticed over the last 6 months the American Airlines app doesn’t offer Same Day Confirmed changes for either my upgraded or paid first class tickets.

Do you think American is restricting same-day confirmed changes for DFW-origin passengers by protecting inventory for connecting itineraries through married segment logic? We already pay American’s highest fares because the hub is used to support connecting traffic (it’s much cheaper to originate in Tyler or Waco). Now it feels like local origin/destination passengers are also losing benefits that American still publicly advertises.

You’re often going to find seats for sale on a flight, but American won’t allow same day confirmed changes onto it. There has to be highly-restricted E inventory available. And it does seem like American uses ‘journey control’ so that the inventory may not be available from Dallas to Springfield, even if it’s available to passengers coming into Dallas from Waco and connecting to Springfield. But it gets more challenging:

• If the passenger is already sitting in first class, there needs to be space and eligibility to confirm into first class on the new flight.
  
• I’ve managed in the past to downgrade to coach and same day change onto a flight with E inventory. I have never successfully same day changed from first class on one flight to another.
  
• If you bought a coach ticket and accepted an ‘Instant Upgrade’ offer to first class you’re out of luck. “Flight segments upgraded through the Instant Upgrade process do not qualify for Same Day Flight Change or Same Day Standby.”.

American Airlines has denied this to me several times, but sometimes the app just does not show options that are available! I still need to call.

This may seem rather niche, but it’s not – especially for someone who lives in an American Airlines hub, where there are several flights a day to their destination. You might get out of a meeting early and want to get home. Your flight not be delayed yet, but you’re afraid of bad weather rolling in. There are plenty of reasons why you’d want to change flights to another one on the same day.

American began enforcing tight inventory restrictions on same day changes, same connecting city, and same calendar day (not just 24 hours) shortly after US Airways management took over. That was when American started viewing themselves as offering a commodity product, competing primarily on price and cost, and seeing passengers as interchangeable. It’s exactly what got them into the financial mess they’re currently trying to climb out of.

And since they’re ticking through policies that are anti-customer, and where they are uncompetitive against United Airlines and Delta, it’s worth highlighting that both United and Delta are far more generous with same day confirmed changes.

• United doesn’t require its elite status members to connect in the same city for a same day confirmed change. And they don’t require special inventory – you just need to have the same inventory available that you’re ticketed in. United also gives you 24 hours of flexibility (so travel the day before or next day) not just same calendar day.

• Delta lets first class passengers same day cofnirmed change to another flight as long as a seat is available (or more to a lower cabin). Coach passengers, like on United, need availability in the same fare class they purchased. They don’t allow same day confirmed changes from connections to non-stop, but they do not require connecting in the same city like American does.

If American wants to give customers a better experience – they say that every point improvement in Net Promoter Score is worth $50 to $100 million to them – a good place to solve problems would be fixing their inferior same day change policy.

And while they’re at it, they could also fix their policy which forbids even top frequent flyers from through-checking bags on separate tickets. They won’t even allow it on two American Airlines tickets, or with their joint venture partners, while United allows it as long as it’s within Star Alliance.