Questions and Answers

Hi Ben,

I recently bought a business class ticket from aa.com with a connection in AUH at a very reasonable price. All the flights were AA flight numbers with international segments operated by EY. Two days ago, I received an email from AA and noticed they changed my ticket and now the international segments are EY flight numbers. That means I will be able to get AAdvantage miles but will not be able to count them toward elite qualification. I have not called AA yet but wanted to ask your expert opinion what should be my course of action since I do not want to cancel the trip.

Thanks for your time and help.

I had the same issue a couple years back with the crazy Etihad Christmas sales and flew from the US to Abu Dhabi for $175 round trip (economy). It took a while to play around with, but eventually was able to book with AA numbers. A couple weeks later I got a similar email to you changing to Etihad numbers.

AA would not budge at all (called the Platinum line a few times). Ultimately I gave up and credited the miles to Etihad. I was Etihad Gold at the time so ended up getting almost 20000 miles for the trip.