Several days ago I ticketed award travel on a oneworld airline using American AAdvantage miles. Since there was a schedule change (by a few minutes) between when I put the reservation on hold and when I was ready to ticket, I had to call an agent rather than issuing the award online.
Three days passed and I never got a ticketing email. The awards still showed as being ‘On Request’. So I rang up American to fix the problem. The agent, naturally, first told me there was no problem but that’s obviously wrong.
- Partner award travel doesn’t get ticketed right away, but it usually happens in a few hours or overnight.
- It’s not for travel right away, and they’ll prioritize immediate travel. There may well be a backup in the ticketing queue. But it does not take three days.
- Every time I’ve ever had an award not ticketed after three days, it’s because something is wrong (easily fixable).
There were schedule changes, and American wouldn’t ticket until the schedule changes were accepted. These were just a change to flight times of 10-20 minutes, and they’d taken place before I had requested ticketing. The agent I gave my credit card for taxes to didn’t clean up the reservations, so they simply sat unticketed.
When award tickets fall out of the queue, do not expect American Airlines to do anything about it proactively. Don’t even expect them to tell you. Watch for the ticketing email, or check your account to see that the status of the reservation has changed to ticketed in order to ensure your reservation is all set.
Don’t get me wrong, this is a minor complaint in the scheme of things for me. I know what I’m doing. A simple phone call got the reservations cleaned up and ready for ticketing. But most people think that when you ticket an award, you have an award ticket. But that isn’t quite the case.
Same thing happened to me a couple of weeks ago, booking a ticket for my mom. In her case, a big change, several hours. But I don’t understand, since the change happened before purchase, why the act of purchase isn’t sufficient notice of accepting the change. The website was pretty clear that the schedule had changed.
In any case, after a week, I used twitter to reach out. We re-accepted the change, they sent it off for ticketing, and two days later, still nothing. Tweeted a second time, and a day or two later, finally we had a ticket.
Every reservation I or my family has had this year on AA has had a flight cancellation masquerading as a schedule change. It’s about 8-10 flights in all. Some have been truly infuriating like substituting a 3pm departure for a 7pm departure DFW to LHR on an award booking when the earlier flight had been bookable for 23k fewer miles. Of course no compensation was offered, because the new flight is packed and they say cancel if you don’t like it. Also lost a preferred seat, and rebooked the the worst seat in biz.
18 months into the pandemic and 6 months into the vaccine rebound there is no excuse for this. I can’t help thinking the repeated cancellations/consolidations are a ruse to get you book on AA over another airline based on a convenient flight time and then later consolidate down flights to save money and leverage available crews. By the time the changes come through, alternative flights are much higher in price so you’re basically stuck.
American sucks in so many ways
There must be thousands of people who get screwed by the lack of instant ticketing from AA.
I’m afraid you’re wrong on this one Gary- it most certainly does take 3 days for some partners. If you read the relevant flyer talk thread, Cathay tickets often take weeks to a month to ticket. That doesn’t mean they aren’t in queue- rattler they are queued based on the travel date. They do always end up ticketing and it is certainly a pain, but not abnormal with AA.
@Johhny- similar thing happened to me last year. Had booked MIA-LHR-FRA even though about $200 more than MIA-DFW-FRA.
Then AA cancelled the MIA- LHR-FRA option and I had to book MIA-DFW-FRA at $235 surcharge… even though that routing had been cheaper at the time of buying the original flight.
No refund offered and I was advised that I could cancel, if I didn’t like it.
Maybe EP status is not that valuable any longer
@RS – I’ve written about a variety of Cathay issues, this wasn’t Cathay and it certainly should not take a week or more to ticket – it should get pushed through- and usually even in that case a long ticketing time indicates something isn’t right with the booking (but *might* get made right in the booking queue or might not, rather than having fallen out of the queue).
I stopped airline and hotel rewards years ago. Never had any luck trying to redeem them (blackouts, high surcharges, unavailable for that date or location, etc). Now I just credit cards that rebate cash.
same thing happened with me on a BA leg change. Taxes were less so they needed my CC# to refund on? Not sure why they couldn’t just refund to original? i provided my CC several times over phone and chat. Still sat in “on request” for weeks. Ultimately cancelled the trip for other reasons but this is not a one-off issue.
Gary–here’s another data point (pre-COVID). Used Avios to book Cathay in coach from Singapore to Hong Kong. Realized I made a mistake and called BA to get me into business (same flight), which was available. BA told me the ticket would need to be reissued, that a separate group within BA Reservations handles reissued tickets, and that reissued tickets were taken care of in the order of proximity to departure. Since my trip wasn’t for awhile, it took more than a month before my ticket was reissued (and that was after several phone calls). BA explained each time I called that there was nothing “wrong” with my reservation but that is the way they did it.
I had a Europe trip booked on AA/BA using AA miles. BA cut its schedule and moved me to a negative 3 hour connection. I never got an email notification. Rather than take a 21 hour connection I canceled the ticket and flew LH.
This is not only an AA problem. Also this year using UA miles LH cut its schedule and left me with a negative time connection. LH refused to open award space to put me on a double connection which had plenty of seats for sale.
Airlines will break your award trip and refuse to fix it. I recommend booking a backup award trip on another alliance. That’s how I saved my trip this year.
Called in Air Tahiti Nui ticket got email with wrong name (and birth date) called same day cancelled and rebooked. It took 10 days for the new ticket to be emailed and multiple calls to AA were useless. But after 10 days to my surprise I did get the emailed ticket so there is hope
Putting this out here for assurance? Had award trip booked with AC Aeroplan miles on UA & LH flights (SFO-FRA-NCE). Called AC to drop the LH segments to/from NCE. All good w AC and LH but UA still shows me going to NCE. Spent dozens of hours on phone w AC & LH. Finally UA says they have the correct ticket # but flights still show on my UA reservation. UA says it’s all ok & these canceled flights are just notes. I’m afraid when I don’t take the canceled LH flight from NCE to FRA UA will think I’m a no show and cancel my flight back to SFO. Sorry for the long post but I’m really nervous. Am I paranoid? Thanks.
Should be: dozens of hours on phone w AC & UA
Be aware that if you book your flight using AA miles and then cancel it might not go back into your account. This happened to me this past week. I booked using 58,000 miles one way to Dublin. AA decided to drop their Dublin flights and the alternative was not acceptable. I cancelled the reservation yet never received my money back or my miles back. I ended up having to call (and wait) to speak with an agent to rectify the situation. She said this was occurring a lot lately. You really need to be on the ball when with AA and don’t get me started on using Flight credits and vouchers.
American again changed my flight time earlier but failed to notify me. They just don’t reach out. They don’t care. No respect or courtesy. Arrogant and imperial.
@Frank
The AA site clearly says award ticketa are not automatically credited and to call. Please learn to read.
I must say this forum is a bunch of cry babies! Haha almost comical. First world elite snob problems! What a joke. You had ti make a call..?! Put it on the news!
Contact Reservations for help reinstating miles on a trip that:
Has already started
Involves travel on partner airlines
Was booked outside the U.S. or on an international version of aa.com
Has been changed since the ticket was originally issued
@Rob, I would call UA about it. I had a similar issue with a ‘ghost’ (cancelled partner award) flight still sitting in my UA reservation. The agent I spoke to said that if it had remained and I didn’t take it, it would have messed up my whole itinerary.
@George—thank you. I’ve called UA so many times but will do it again. Their agents are not at all knowledgeable about what they are doing. I will call again today. Thanks again.
After reading everyone’s comments on bad experiences on using the Award miles for AA, it is really scary to use the Award miles to book the tickets. Does American Airlines know this? How do you ensure your reservation and the booking of the ticket?
After reading your post I was worried b/c my reserved and on-hold AA award on Qantas wasn’t ticketed after 68 hours. I had called AA and given my CC details and was advised to wait 24 hours for ticket email.
Calling again revealed nothing has happened on AA’s side. Gave CC details again and bingo. Could see the trip status change to ‘ticketed’ and miles being taken out of my account while still on the phone. So, be diligent and don’t waste time waiting around.