AAdvantage Award Inventory Question
 

Hi, I had held a reservation but I misunderstood the deadline and the reservation was canceled.

Now I can't get it back using the same number of miles; I need to use an Anytime Award instead so it costs much more.

I know it's probably impossible to answer, but does anyone know if inventory will return? Part of the problem is a JFK-LAX flight and I'm now unable to use reduced miles for that flight.

Thank you.

If that is the problem you might talk to AA and see if you can buy a regular ticket for the segment that is making the difference. You could put on hold a ticket such as out LAX - Hawaii and then back Hawaii - NYC. Just use the multi city part of the award booking page. Then phone them to make the "purchase" of the FF ticket with the additional paid segment. Or if they won't do that or it seems too expensive you might consider if you have enough time to book a separate ticket on another airline just NYC to LAX. Note though that if there is a problem with the flight on that separately purchased ticket such as delay and missed connection you will likely get no accomodation from AA on the FF ticket.

Award inventory is released on a basis determined by yield management computers, all programmed by Hogwarts graduates. There's really no way to know.

What date and what flight are you looking for? Coach, business or first class?

If the original award is not available,dependent on when you are traveling award inventory does replenish.Either yield management will periodically release those seats or someone may cancel causing the seat to go back into the inventory.Call AA and see if they can do a yield management request.It takes just a minute for a response. Unfortunately they can be frugal with dispensing miles.Yes you can always add a paid segment to your itinerary so long as it is an AA flt. You will run into rebooking issues if the purchased segment is on another carrier.

Thanks, I did manage to rebook the flights again today. But now I'm worried for another reason. I paid the fees, but the status is pending.

I called AA and they said this is normal; this still needs to be ticketed by another system. In the meantime, these flights are gone in the system -- i.e. if I pull up a fresh award I can't see them.

So I'm worried that they can end up canceling everything.

Does this sound right to people that there's a lag before this whole process completes? I just hope it doesn't go awry. I can't recall what happened with my other ticket requests; I think I had an award with Air Berlin that took a while, but these flights are all AA.

Thanks again.

After writing all that, I just checked and it's been ticketed.

One lesson I learned from this -- the hold time is until 11:59 pm local time of the origin. My itinerary was starting from Europe, so I didn't realize that my hold was canceled earlier than Eastern time.