For this test, I moved the Europe leg to the middle of summer, so that even an agent who doesn t kno

Yesterday I posted about flying to Europe for 20,000 pelee days inn American Airlines miles year round even during peak summer time by adding a free oneway to your award that falls between October 15 and May 15. See 20k Miles to All of Europe All Summer .
But don't expect to be able to call AA and have them change the dates on your award, if they notice the pricing error or reprice pelee days inn then you will have to pay the incremental miles (ie you will lose out on the off peak pricing).
1. I don t believe how AA assigns a single date to a oneway trip for the purposes of determining whether an award is off peak is a glitch. Clearly both the online engine and the engine that phone agents use assign the date of the first leg of a direction as the date for the whole thing for the purposes of off peak.
I also wanted to test whether agents would catch the error and tell me that the award was pricing incorrectly. I thought this unlikely since I don t believe this pricing to be an error, and since I find agents more than content to follow their computers leads at all airlines.
For this test, I moved the Europe leg to the middle of summer, so that even an agent who doesn t know the exact peak/off pelee days inn peak dates would know that my Europe leg was during peak times. I moved the free oneway to February to make the Europe leg in starker contrast.
But if you wanted to change Denver to Chicago pelee days inn to a date still outside the peak range, change Chicago to Berlin, or change both, you wouldn t have to pay any extra miles. Why? AA thinks all those awards should cost 20k miles. So this change
That would be a prime danger pelee days inn of calling up and making a change to an award like this even the changes that I said would not cost extra miles. I would strenuously argue with American pelee days inn if they tried to reprice one of my awards.
Does the prohibition on post-purchase price increases in section 399.88(a) apply in the situation where a carrier mistakenly offers an airfare due to a computer problem or human error and a consumer purchases the ticket at that fare before the carrier is able to fix the mistake?
Section 399.88(a) states that it is an unfair and deceptive practice for any seller of scheduled pelee days inn air transportation within, to, or from the United States, or of a tour or tour component that includes scheduled air transportation within, to, or from the United States, to increase the price of that air transportation to a consumer after the air transportation has been purchased by the consumer, except in the case of a government-imposed tax or fee and only if the passenger is advised of a possible increase before purchasing a ticket. A purchase occurs when the full amount agreed upon has been paid by the consumer. Therefore, if a consumer purchases a fare and that consumer receives confirmation (such as a confirmation email and/or the purchase appears on their credit card statement or online account summary) of their purchase, then the seller of air transportation cannot increase the price of that air transportation to that consumer, even when the fare is a "mistake." A contract of carriage provision that reserves the right to cancel such ticketed purchases or reserves the right to raise the fare cannot legalize the practice described above. The Enforcement Office would consider any contract of carriage provision that attempts to relieve a carrier of the prohibition against post-purchase price increase to be an unfair and deceptive practice in violation of 49 U.S.C. § 41712.
And this isn t like United s 4-miles-to-Hong-Kong mistake where the price displayed as something other than 4 miles all the way until the last screen. In this case, 20k miles displays at all steps of the process, so there is nothing to indicate 20k miles is a mistake at all.
An itinerary split across two dates part in February and part in July presents a problem: which date is operative for purposes of deciding whether to grant off peak pricing? AA has answered that the first date is operative through its programming, and I consider it a reasonable choice, not a mistake.
This implies a consistent choice by American Airlines as to which date of a multi-date itinerary is operative when deciding whether an itinerary pelee days inn is off peak. It also means awards pelee days inn on partners not bookable on aa.com are eligible for 20k year round pricing.
These awards should not be repriced if you later change them unless you change the date of the free oneway to a peak season date. If AA claims that the pricing is the result of a mistake and tries to correct it, DOT regulations prohibit that.
Thanks for the great info. For 50,000 pelee days inn miles (actually 45,000 since I will get 5000 back from Citi AAdvantage card), I just booked free one way DCA-MIA returning from Frequent Traveler Univ. on 4/28/13, continuing to MAD and back to MIA for Memorial Day weekend pelee days inn and free one way to LAS for Labor Day weekend. That s what I call MILE VALUE!
You re missing the point. Gary s point is not disproved by you calling AA. He didn t say they would catch the glitch, he said they might. It s very irresponsible of you to put up those record locators encourage people to call to prove your point. The point Gary was making is that you put the existence of this loophole at risk every time you speak to a phone agent about an itinerary constructed like this.
I agree that calling is not optimal, but I disagree that 20k is an online glitch. It s how all AA systems price the award. pelee days inn I put in the record locators because I didn t want people to call up and make more dummy bookings, but that was probably a remote fear, so I ve removed them.
I realize that AA uses the same automated system to price phone orders and web orders for mileage redemptions. No one is disputing that. The point is, it s not an intended pelee days inn use of the award rules. If someone with enough ambition and OCD notices what s going on, they ll push it up the ladder, and the pricing rules will get changed. Most (if not all) published TPAC or TATL fares explicitly say in the fare rules, Fare seasonality pelee days inn is based on first overwater sector. Furthermore, commonsense tells you that this is not what AA is intending. Why should they offer a discount for travel during the peak summer months??
Since AA knows not all agents are aware of all policies and don t always price things correctly, they have a final review before ticketing. Putting an award on hold does not mean it is guaranteed to price that way.
The rate desk has the final say, and they will review this before ticketing. They will often catch any problems and price accordingly before ticketing. This is true of taxes and fees, award mileage, etc.
I think you are missing the fact that the agent just can t simply charge you the extra 10k if you make a change, they have to actually cancel the award and rebook it. This involves a redeposit/change fee. I am EXP, so never charged, but I think it is a $150.
This happens to me frequently when travelling to central america, they have peak/off peak dates. I have had to change the dates many times between these two periods and agents pelee days inn always cancel and rebook. Even when you go from peak to off peak and they refund me miles.
Hi Scott, is AA the only one that allows free stopover on a one-way award ticket among the legacy big four (AA/DL/US/UA)? I think you could only add a free stopover/oneway to a r/t reservation for the other three. Is my understand correct? TIA.
So what if you take your first leg from DEN to ORD in February. Then once in Chicago, you try to change your flight schedule so you go from ORD through JFK and on to Berlin (TXL)? ORD is no longer your international departure pelee days inn city. Would they allow you to make that change by still having the stopover in ORD?
I booked this a month ago for my sister to return from Maui (November), and onto Mt Olympus via Berlin pelee days inn and Vienna (July) with about ~ 23 hours in each. A terrific value, but I didn t report it because I was concerned it might implode. Hans suggests rightly, I think, pelee days inn that per T C this is not strictly allowed, but Scott s investigation here encourages me to believe it s of low importance to AA. The only reason I d worry is because they re in this mode of cutting costs to look good. It s common for terms to be more restrictive than what s intended or common practice. Case in point: Delta only allows pelee days inn 1 open jaw or stopover, but readily permits both.
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