Since Wednesday, July 22 American Airlines has been able to apply up to 8 credits from cancelled ticket to a single new ticket purchase.
When you cancel a trip, any residual value is stored alongside your ticket number. The ticket number is what’s used to apply a credit to a new reservation. American’s AACoRN system now lets an agent enter multiple ticket numbers – up to 8 – that have credits attached to them, and apply them all to a booking.
There are some limits to the system, though. You can use multiple credits that add up to less than the cost of a ticket. You can use a single credit that is greater than the cost of a ticket, and still have credit left. But you cannot use multiple credits that add up to more than the cost of a ticket and get credits back.
Here’s an example:
A customer has multiple Trip Credits in varying amounts and expiration dates for an itinerary pricing at 455 dollars for example:
- 1 Trip Credit for 25 USD – expires 30JUL20
- 1 Trip Credit for 50 USD – expires 05AUG20
- 1 Trip Credit for 500 USD – expires 31DEC20
AACoRN will allow you to use either the two lower value Trip Credits in conjunction with a Credit Card for the add collect of 380USD
Or
AACoRN will allow you to use the single higher value Trip Credit covering the price of the ticket and issue a residual in the amount of 45 USD
Note: If all three Trip Credits are applied AACoRN will display the following error message:
With all the flight credits from cancelled trips people have from the beginning of the pandemic this change is going to be useful.
This is great. Now if they would only remove the restriction that this credits could only be used with new AA tickets with a USA origin. I had a couple Of AA credits that I wanted to use on an EU to USA ticket, and it was ‘no can do’. I guess the more restrictions they can put on it, the more likely they’ll just expire and they’ll pocket it—which is ultimately what they really want to happen.
Hmm would this be a way to be able to redeem all those old gift cards I have for one larger ticket? Have a number of small gift cards from airline fees that got reimbursed back in the day but AA only allows you to redeem a certain number of giftcards. The result is I am limited how much I can redeem per flight and it prevented me from booking premium seats. Maybe with this method I can redeem giftcards on cheaper domestic tickets and then combine those tickets to purchase a much more expensive premium seat going overseas?