Questions and Answers

There was a thread recently about Award Bookings and the issue of AA’s engine showing “phantom ability”. It was asked why can’t AA correct that? I answered along the lines of it is a complicated IT issue.

Well, I I just had a recent AA experience that again demonstrates the issue of complex IT systems and introducing / overlaying new systems over old. In April I booked an AA ticket from PHL – XXX – YYY on AA and AS for this week. Due to a last minute change, I had to change the outbound by 1 day. I called EXP line and asked them to make the change (even though the price went up drastically). EXP line could not see the ticket, though I could on aa.com. Though when I tried to make the change online, aa.com returned “No option available” even though I could see it when doing a dummy booking. Why?

Because whatever system (Sabre?) EXP line was looking at showed the AS flight as sold out. But aa.com showed a Main Cabin ticket available. And there was an AS seat available, but it was in F. But aa.com did not offer an F ticket option, because all the XXX-PHL returns on AA were sold out in F. aa.com was piecing together an AA / AS mixed cabin fare, but Sabre would not let the EXP line do the same, because AS was sold out in Y and AA was sold out in F. I was able to book it online, but I had to book a whole new ticket and cancel my return leg (which, ironically [USER=5445]@Mikewarren1000[/USER] was on a connecting flight but with a flatbed because my upgrade cleared) for a new but more direct return flight.

I probably did not do a great explaining this, but I think Sabre would not let EXP line make the change because I was trying to change an existing reservation to a mixed-cabin fare. The underlying data was there – tickets in different classes – and aa.com could piece it together, but only as a new ticket. Anyway, after 2+ hours it was resolved.