American Airlines is a lot stricter with same day confirmed changes than their competitors are.
- Only Platinum Pro, Executive Platinum and ConciergeKey members can same day change for free, everyone else pays $75.
- You have to keep the same number of stops and keep the same connecting city or cities. You can’t connect in Dallas instead of Chicago. You can’t move to a non-stop flight from a connection or vice versa.
And you can only make a same day change when specific inventory is available. That’s the ‘E’ fare bucket. So there may be seats available, and seats even in the same fare class as your ticket, but if American doesn’t make specific inventory for same day changes available you won’t be able to do it.
However as JonNYC reports, American is again testing offering some customers with connecting itineraries the option to change to a non-stop for $75.
"Project Direct"
Effective immediately, AA will start offering selected customers the opportunity to change their connecting flights to a nonstop flight for a non-refundable change charge of $75.00 per person.
Flights/PNRs will be selected by RM and pax phoned to offer
— JonNYC (@xJonNYC) September 6, 2018
American Airlines confirms,
Yes, it is something we used to offer to customers and are testing it again. As we test it, we hope the customers who receive the offer find it beneficial.
This isn’t an offer customers can call and request. The fee is $75.
What would be great for American to learn from this test is that they ought to be as flexible as their competitors in allowing same day changes.
Increases revenue for AA, reduces risk to AA, and they can pretend they are doing it for the customers. Win win win.
Upselling at the last minute to nonstop flights with empty seats is brilliant. More airlines should do it.
+2 Unf**kingbelievable! UA has a similar program in place to resolve overbookings but they call and offer you ETCs or F. AA wants to charge you to do them a favor! And the sad thing is pax will probably think they’re getting a deal.
“What would be great for American to learn from this test is that they ought to be as flexible as their competitors in allowing same day changes.”
Can only hope, but probably will never happen. The same city restriction is so dumb.
The only thing that still surprises me about AA is that anyone not living in Dallas or Phoenix still flies AA.
@djibouti I live in Dallas/ 3 MM ExPlat and I gave up on AA and went to UA, even with the added hassle. More of a protest vote. But pleasantly surprised with UA. Will fly >100 PQM and already challenged matched to 1K. Hopefully UA doesn’t muck things up too bad going forward. But overall a better experience than AA
Why are AA’s “projects” are always so bad?
It’s unfathomable for any rational being that a blogger with so many credit cards as yourself would have to sit in the back just because a commoner paid for a first class seat.