One really member-friendly feature of American AAdvantage is the ability to put an award on hold. Delta, United, and Alaska make you ticket an award right away or potentially lose the space. I worried that American might eliminate this feature when they dropped award cancel and redeposit fees, but that hasn’t happened at this point.

Award holds don’t require you to have all the miles in your account to reserve space – you can lock in the award and then transfer miles into your account, for instance.

There’s a glitch putting American AAdvantage awards on hold when they involve travel on JetBlue. The normal hold time American offers if 5 days. However JetBlue is cancelling space that’s held for more than 24 hours. Agents are being instructed to place awards on hold over the phone for just 24 hours. But the website is still assigning normal 5 day holds.

If you place an award on hold for 5 days, that space will likely cancel out. And American can’t restore the award for you if availability is gone when you notice. The most American can do is find you an alternative, or perhaps open up space on one of their own flights for your travel.

Here’s the internal detail for agents: