Questions and Answers

Lucky,

Have you had any recent experience attempting a redemption with AA on QR in the Gulf? It appears that in the last few months AA has silently changed the way they’re pricing these awards, and are now refusing point-blank to price QR’s two-cabin short-haul F as a U/Business award.

This is in complete contradiction to the stated policy on the [URL=’https://www.aa.com/i18n/aadvantage-program/miles/redeem/award-travel/oneworld-and-other-airline-partner-award-chart.jsp’]Oneworld Partner Award[/URL] chart:
[I]”For flights offering only two classes of service the Economy and Business / First Class awards apply. For flights offering three classes of service Economy, Business / First and First Class awards apply.”[/I]

Have been discussing my recent experience changing an older award on this [URL=’https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/american-airlines-aadvantage/1523205-qr-qatar-airways-earn-redeem-aa-miles-award-master-thd-53.html#post28104179.’]FT thread[/URL].

Quite surprised that this hasn’t seen more coverage, given the potential impact. There’s no F cabin on my long-haul sector, and therefore AA’s insistence on pricing the short-haul connection as F means I’d have to shell out 20K more miles for literally no reason.

Cheers,

Dakaix.

I’ve had it go both ways…have you had it go to the rates desk to price?

[QUOTE=”Tiffany, post: 29192, member: 7″]I’ve had it go both ways…have you had it go to the rates desk to price?[/QUOTE]

Hello Tiffany,

Apologies, I didn’t include the full history in my post for brevity – although it’s detailed in the FT thread I linked to. This was actually a change to an existing award. I’d had the same experience as you back in November, originally told it was F and when pointed out that it was a two-class service the rate desk confirmed it should be priced as Business. Between then and now AA appears to have changed their pricing algorithm.

Suffice to say the EXP agent I dealt with on Wednesday (to change the point of origin, which took some 2.5hrs) tried several rate agents. There were some very interesting excuses given as to why they were pricing at the higher rate. My favourite being “it doesn’t matter that its a two-class aircraft, since it’s an international flight in an F class. We can only issue those in an F award.”.

Cheers,

Dakaix

Weird…I’ll keep an eye on it, and let you know if we notice the same thing or find a workaround. Super frustrating.