American AAdvantage is changing one of its generous policies. I’m sad to see this change, though even with this being implemented, American still has among the most generous policies in the industry, so I guess it’s hard to get too upset. Let’s first recap the old policy, and then we’ll discuss the new one.
Continue reading: Sad: American AAdvantage Reduces Award Ticket Holds To 24 Hours
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Not sure how much this really matters to me when I can just cancel an award ticket for free. Really the only avantage I see is not having award miles tied up that you could need for something else soon, or American might bothered as much for holds when you are doing a bunch of them for speculative travel.
Award ticket "brokers" abused this policy for years to keep the nice tickets like JL F away from general public for nearly no price.
Great for AA to finally realizing this and make some changes.
Thank you AA for eliminating this loophole. Too many selfish members abused this system in the past and they're on the right way to fix it.
I actually like this change for the broker reason. Especially since we can cancel the ticket at no cost later on if we don't find a workable return/onward flight, it doesn't affect us much.
If you have no miles and want to speculatively hold before transferring from AMEX etc
There is no CC that transfers to AA. Bilt used to but now they moved to Alaska instead of AA
I agree that there has likely been broker abuse that led to this and this change will likely benefit individuals looking for rare premium seats.
If they are able to abuse a system that allows holds, they can do it regardless if it's a 5 day hold or 1 day hold.
The only effective way to negate this would be for AA to implement some kind of 1 hold per account policy.
I think Alvin meant to say transfer points from a family member. I did this and needed the 5 days as my family member was on vacation at the time.
In my experience, there is no such thing as "changing" an AA award, at least when it involves a JL flight (such as adding a domestic AA segment). All you can do is cancel and rebook whatever is available at the time.
I think this is another sign that points towards upcoming Citi transfers. When you add Citi transfers, suddenly a massive new user base (casual Citi cardholders) are able to access AAdvantage awards previously only available to AA flyers and big AAdvantage spenders. The 5-Day hold becomes the default operating procedure for all these new users so you don't risk transferring points needlessly into a locked system until you are 100% certain you are going to take the flight. With a 1-Day hold, this evens the playing field by pushing users into paying at the time of purchase while still allowing some flexibility to hold and consider options.
That's not true. Many agents will say this but it is possible to keep the space and make changes or add flights if you get an agent who knows what she is doing.
Lufthansa Miles&More also allows holds (up to 7 Days) for Award flights consisting only of Miles&More-Issuing Airlines (LHG+ LO, LG, OU)
@SBS - Copying Omar here, this is technically possible. I did it for 2x recent JAL awards but did have to HUCA for ~5 days before I got an agent who could do it. It's unfortunate but with patience it is possible.
It’s bad for me.
I like to put the award on hold. And the book hotels. Now I have to do that in 24 hours.
Wasn’t aware of broker though. But it makes Aadvsntage less attractive.
It's a bummer if you want to transfer Marriott points to top off an award if you're a couple thousand miles short. Marriott transfers typically take 48 hours to go through, and the hold was great for that. 24 hours won't be enough time.
The difference is that having to refresh a hold daily is 5x more labor intensive than having to refresh a hold every 5 days. Not saying it can't still be abused, just that the level of effort necessary to abuse it just got much higher.
The reservations already on the 5 day courtesy hold do not seem to be affected. I made one this morning (UK time), and it still shows the 5 day hold
A very competent AA agent told me once that only AA partner airlines’ itineraries can be changed, not the AA ones, because AA now has dynamic pricing, and not the standard fixed partner airline pricing like 57.5k transatlantic on AY or BA or IB.
Cool. Perhaps some of those first class speculative holds on JAL ex JFK will now be freed up. I look forward to this
Highly unlikely they will be able to enact the same abuse. To "refresh" the hold would involve cancelling the held space and it is highly probable that the moment the space is cancelled, someone will grab it or the act of cancelling will not return the space to general availability as happens currently.
they already do for same day reservations. My original reservation hold has been cancelled twice after reserving an alternative (plan b) flight on the same day.
@Daniel B. - a rule of thumb: the more confidently an AAgent tells you something, the more likely they are to be incorrect. When calling to change my itinerary I got the most confidently wrong explanations why it wasn't possible, every one different from the last. It's funny because when you find the AAgent who can do what you ask, it'll take ~1 minute and be so easy you'll start to doubt reality.
@Dusty - more than likely these abusers are using automated systems / bots and not people so it makes no difference. Even if they are using people, paying someone in a third world country $5 a day to sit there refreshing holds is easily doable. As I stated before, this change is not intended to combat "brokers" as there are other ways to do that.
Today ( 7 May 2025), there was no hold option at all when trying to book an awards miles ticket to Japan in April 2026. The only option was to purchase with my saved credit card or add a new credit card.