A couple of months ago I explained why I went all-in and earned 7 million American AAdvantage miles with their year-end SimplyMiles promotion. It came down to: I haven’t seen my family in Australia in 3 years, and I looked forward to being able to visit them using business class award tickets whenever I wanted to. The $0.0042 cost of the miles meant I could book rulebuster awards for more miles for myself, my wife and my daughter and have it make sense.
I went ahead and did just that. Then American suspended its Los Angeles – Sydney flight. Not to worry, I figured.
- They’re a joint venture partner with Qantas. It’s supposed to be ‘metal neutral’ with Qantas flights effectively the same thing as American flights. They could just move me over to Qantas.
- An American spokesperson even said they are “proactively reaching out to customers scheduled to travel on affected flights to offer alternate arrangements.”
However that’s not what I experienced. And an American spokesperson told me they’d only honor business class awards in their original class of service if Qantas had business class award space available. Since of course they do not, American will only rebook in coach. And, “you can have your miles reinstated or rebook to travel once we begin offering service between LAX-SYD again in November.”
The notion that when American exits a market it will not honor reservations in their ticketed class of service on a joint venture partner has important implications, I think, for the notion of consumer benefit that they are claiming as they defend a government lawsuit against their JetBlue joint venture.
I have argued the American-JetBlue joint venture should be permitted both because together the two airlines are viable competitors against United and Delta in New York, and because the very same government had just approved the deal before suing to overturn it. The first of these arguments rests on the consumer benefits that American is essentially reneging on in its Qantas joint venture.
American and JetBlue have been swapping which routes each operates, and the number of flights where that’s the case is far greater than with Qantas. Joint ventures encourage one airline to exit a market in favor of another based on, for instance, available aircraft. And this isn’t supposed to matter to customers, at least that’s the promise. Except that it does matter, when American says that tickets they’ve issued in business class will only be honored in coach on their joint venture partner airline.
I don’t actually regret my big AAdvantage mileage buy, but I’m a little less excited now that I see first-hand that the airline doesn’t honor its tickets when its joint venture still operates the route. As for my own trip, I’m fine thanks to Air Canada award space and that they’re adding an Austin – Vancouver non-stop!
However, airlines will honor it the other way. I had a united biz award to Australia on their Korean partner. The segment for Seoul to Australia was cancelled, and United were kind enough to offer me biz space on their own metal, non stop. (unfortunately I was unable to get the visa to Australia so I had to cancel. The immigration authorities refused the acknowledge the the urge to surf at Byron Bay qualifies as a humanitarian exception. Rude)
I had the same thing happen on a Qantas Award on AA.
Will they honor it if you paid cash?
Is AA still running the AKL flight? Would they move you to LAX-AKL-SYD?
Ran into a similar issue when IB screwed up my LAX -MAD -LAX, in the other way. Wouldn’t open upon AA metal (I’m plat pro).
Said it was because of there own issues with delaying TLV.
Wow – serious implications of this is the policy going forward .Certainly contradicts the metal neutral joint venture. This is actually an issue that should be raised with DOT . Not likely DOT will act but they should be made aware of this because it appears to go against the spirit of joint ventures . Beware if this is a foreshadowing of things to come at don’t spend a dime AA..
I have had a related experience with a better outcome. I booked business class tickets to Europe through American using American miles. The flight was operated by BA. BA later cancelled the flight. I tried to rebook on another BA flight but was told by American i could not rebook on BA because there were then no award tickets on the BA flight (there were plenty of revenue seats available). The better outcome was that American rebooked me in business class on an American flight. The route was a bit circuitous but i did get seats in business class.
@Gary,
Wonder if you are EXP currently or not. Reason I ask, I recently (within the last 3 weeks) had a similar issue on a combined (2 award) JFK-HND-SYD-MEL ticket in F and C. JAL canceled the HND-SYD flight on the day I was scheduled to travel – making the routing a bust. After about 3 days AA called and offered: JFK-LAX(AA)-SYD-MEL in F (except for the last segment in J) on QF. They got the partner to open up the space it seems. All in all I saved 10K on the award price. Clearly ymmv.
@Mike – yes, I have been EXP for a decade. I verified with the airline that when they eliminate service on a route (not cancel a flight) that this is their policy.
Sorry to express myself in this way, but HAVE YOU BEEN LIVING UNDER A ROCK???
They have not been rebooking cancelled C award itineraries for ages even on routes still operated by them. You have to be lucky and find another open award seat. They will not put you on empty revenue seats. They’d rather fly that plane half empty than accomodate their loyal customers with an award ticket that got canceled due to weather or a breakdown of service on their end. I have had this happening 3 times already in the past 3 years or so.
When you fly on an award ticket, you’re on your own. You better be flexible and have an emergency budget ready in case you need to pay for a walk-up fare to wherever you have to go…
How do you expect AA to book you into inventory that doesn’t exist? if QF doesn’t have any award business seats available (they never do), whats’ AA to do? Buy J seats on your behalf to fulfill your questionable Simplymiles balance? Spare me. If you had booked a paid revenue ticket they would’ve rebooked you no problem. Award flights are another story.
AA no longer publishes their complete Conditions of Carriage online. You need to go to one of their offices to read it but you have the right to do so. The CoC is the agreement between the passenger and the airline. Don’t believe anything anyone tells you about their responsibilities or lack of responsibilities. Read the CoC.
If the CoC says that the airline will put you on another flight, then it is their contractual obligation to do so. If they don’t you have a case against them for the damages, such as the cost of a replacement ticket.
I’ve yet to see a CoC that distinguished between passenger who paid with points and those who paid with cash. That airlines fail to fulfill their obligations to the formers is a result of passengers filing to take them to task.
I just had the same thing happen to me – I had business class flights flying on Hawaiian airlines (using AA awards) for this June. When the flights were cancelled and I talked to AA, they said the only thing they could do was rebook me in available award space. The only option she could find was HNL-LAX-NRT-SYD. it was going to take 3 days and all in coach. Not exactly the way I would want to start my honeymoon…
I remember in 2017, was flying in F (awards) with my now wife, HKG-LAX. AA canceled the flight, so I called the EP desk. They rebooked us in Cathay Pacific F by paying for it (about $3k/pp). That move helped me requal for EP that year and of course earned me a boatload of AA miles.
No longer an EP, I can’t imagine AA doing that for me or anyone else (maybe a CK). While it’s truly sad that his millions of miles won’t be nearly as valuable 😉 , @Gary’s point is spot on, in that this represents a significant change in policy from AA.
A booked flight is a booked flight, award or paid, and AA needs to honor what a customer paid for. We all know DP and AA have been full of it when it comes to getting gov’t handouts, so it comes as no surprise that they’re not living up to the JV terms I’m sure they stated in their application.
This is common because AA can’t force open award space on QF metal, only AA metal. I’d it happened the other way, where QF cancelled, AA would likely force open award space on AA metal for you.
@Abc – my point is they should endorse the ticket over onto their joint venture partner per Rule 80 (C)(3) of the American Airlines tariff
Gary, if you have a claim that sounds in AA’s tariff, you could file a case in small claims court.
You could also file a formal DOT complaint for an official public on-the-record reply from an AA attorney and a decision by senior DOT staff. https://www.benedelman.org/dot-complaints/ This is the best way to win and tot get a genuine benefit for others.
Certainly major tension between AA’s practice and the “metal neutrality” benefits AA promised the public when requesting antitrust immunity.
@Ben Edelman – I *think* American is violating tariff Rule 80 (C)(3) which requires them to “Endorse the unused ticket for the purpose of rerouting over another carrier with whom AA has agreement to do so” – I am waiting to hear from the airline on their position, and whether they are invoking a claim that its decision to suspend the specific route is the result of a force majeure event under 80(C)(4).