theboss7593

A little background: So for the record I have booked tons and tons of flights with Awards. I have also put tons of flights on hold. Living in the NYC tri-state area and commuting to LA Area many know they are the traffic capitals of the US. So flexibly is a must. Out of the tri-state area depending on where I am for work I fly anywhere from EWR,LGA,JFK,HPN,PHL and into the LA Area BUR,LAX,ONT,SNA,SAN. Generally speaking I always have a flight prepaid with points or cash generally EWR-LAX (via ORD or DFW or PHX) but depending on where I am that day will usually put a second flight on hold in case planes change. Whenever I do put these flights on hold they are generally wide-open flights as I am very good about scoring upgrades. I'm something like19 out of 20 this year. And 30-40% of the time these holds end up being the flights I end up taking and I cancel my original paid in full ticket.

Now for the fun part:

I had booked a EWR-ORD-LAX ticket that was paid for, ticketed and EVEN checked in for with a BP. (purchased 7 days out) CPU'd 5 days out as well.
2 Days out I placed a hold on a JFK-DFW-BUR ticket. Hold set to expire 2 hours prior to dep as usual.
Around T-19 I log into my AA account to check something and I notice all of a sudden my reservation shows me seatless (I'm thinking oh maybe a VIP movement took seat 1A from me and I needed to reselect seat) HA Nope, click on it the reservation disappears. Check my email, sure enough 25 minutes prior it shows that the PAID reservation (NOT THE HOLD) has been cancelled. I call in and the agent (who sounded like he was in the middle east) tells me yeah because you have two flights booked the same day the same direction you cannot do that? I say really? I've been doing that weekly for the last 2 years. He says well the algorithm finally caught up to you. At this point I tell him, the only rules I'm aware of is that you cannot be TICKETED on the same flight but a hold on another flight is not forbidden, he tells me yes it is. (EXP Desk, although when he answered he claimed it was the Concierge Key Desk). The notes says "CNCLD Duplicate City booking." So I tell him why is the system not canceling the HOLD and cancelling a PAID, CHECKED IN with BP ticket. He says doesn't matter that's how it goes.

Says he can't do anything and my only option is to rebook (abeit 10K higher in points now) but NOT until I cancel my hold. If I don't cancel my hold to BUR any ticket to LAX will be auto-cancelled. So I cancel my Burbank flight and rebook. Figure I''l take it up with AAdvantage Desk to get the points back. Get the upgrade on the 1st leg automatically, 2nd leg I'm number 2 with 6 open seats. Call back in explain situation, wanted to clarify, this agent says that can happen but in the future book both tickets with awards or cash and can always refund no problem and that way it will prevent the system from auto-cancelling as HOLD bookings can sometimes cause that he said but 2 paid awards to different cities never will. Okay got it.


Call in as we approach T-12 now I'm number 2 with only 2 open seats thinking my 19/20 of the year is about to be 19/21 for no good reason. EXP agent says it should've never been cancelled as BUR and LAX are not same destinations as it says on the notes and instantly puts me back in to first on the second leg and tells me to certainly write into the AAdvantage Desk and that this should not happen to me period. So now at T-4 it's announced that ORD-LAX is 4 hours late so I get rebooked EWR-DFW-LAX which ends up having it's own problem and I end up just cancelling the AWARD ticket outright and flying United direct to LAX.

At this point the only benefit is I don't have to claw at them for the 10K extra miles back but I did write a lengthy email asking for an explanation of whether this should've happened and did I really get away with it all these years? or that this was a mistake on their end.

Anyway just sharing my story, hope it doesn't happen to any of you, the amount of time rebooking and dealing with this was a LOT more than it ever should've been.

Dave Noble

Impossible bookings are prohibited - if you booked JFK-DFW-BUR for a time when it would not be possible to undertake the flight, then there is nothing wrong in the cancellation occurring

From AA's conditions of carriage at https://www.aa.com/i18n/customer-ser...f-carriage.jsp

theboss7593

Per two FlyerTalk Evangelists

"AA's system will never auto-cancel a fully ticketed reservation, period. You could have 6 different overlapping reservations on the exact same day and as long as all of them are fully ticketed (not on hold) then nothing would happen to them."

That's the part I cannot believe based on other reports. Cancelling a HOLD sure, but a fully booked with BP ticket is beyond comprehension.

Dave Noble

They were obviously incorrect

Also in the same section of AA's CoC, it states
You were the one in breach of AA's conditions of carriage and AA was fully entitled to take the action

All the time that you lost was down to your being in breach of terms that make up AA's CoC.

Antarius

All of us regular posters are just normal people who like flying and fly AA a lot. We share what we see, hear and experience (and what we glean from others experiences). It's almost always spot on - there are some posters here who are incredibly, knowledgeable and helpful.

However, we aren't privy to AA's internal operations or how they handle things. AA could have found a repeat pattern of you having duplicate bookings and acted on it (which they may not have done for someone who has only done it rarely). They could have changed their operating procedure in these cases for everyone - we don't know.

In general, if circumventing rules or pushing the boundary, nothing is a guarantee. There's a likely outcome, but that's about as close as it gets. Personally, I don't make a pattern or habit out of it; that's my risk calculus - others have different tolerances.

​​​as Dave Noble said, per AA's rules, they can cancel your ticket, hold or booked.

JJeffrey

This is for sure the first time in 20+ years that I've ever seen or heard of the AA system auto cancelling a fully ticketed reservation. It is definitely strange behavior.

USFlyerUS

Just guessing, but the algorithm may have detected this being a repeat pattern with the OP. Doing this every so often likely won't result in anything like this happening. However, doing this as many times a year as the OP implies, I'm not surprised someone or something at AA finally noticed.

JJeffrey

Also, the fact that there was a note in the cancelled reservation leads me to believe there could have been some human intervention here, and this was not just the system at work.

theboss7593

Well now I am aware, I was not aware of this until this happened.

You were one of the FT Evangelists I was referencing haha! Like you stated I was stunned by the fact that an actual paid award was cancelled not just a hold, anyway a data point for everyone to take note of.