Here's the scenario: Award travel on American from one-way San Francisco to Barcelona in November. Miles coming from two separate accounts, mine and DH's. I phoned AA to find out if I could book one locator number when drawing from separate award accounts. Rez person said that wasn't possible and that I needed book the two reservations sequentially. So I booked mine (25K miles for first class SFO to JFK and business class from JFK to BCN). When I tried to book DH's from his account in the next two or three minutes there was no availability! I had got the last available seat at that award level (there were only two and ALL other seats in first and business were available on both legs). I phoned AA and talked with a sympathetic rez person who put forward a request to her supervisor to add another award seat (DH's) to my successful reservation. She gave DH's rez request a locator number and said to phone tomorrow afternoon to see if the seat had been allocated. She was not optimistic.

My question to those who fly on award travel more frequently than we do: Is there a strategy for getting AA to release another seat at this award level? Is the likelihood of this happening greater because every seat is available other than the two booked from SFO to JFK? Sympathetic rez person said to continue to check for availability.

Any information you can provide will be greatly appreciated.

"Sympathetic rez person said to continue to check for availability."

That's really all you can do. At five months out, AA is hoping to sell those seats for cash rather than FF miles. As time gets closer, they may see they can't and would release another of them for mileage redemption, but you have no gauarantee of it.

Or shell out double the miles for an AAnytime award. That essentially opens up evertyhing. Is that an option?

If you don't have enough miles to follow Jeff's suggestion would you be willing to fly economy SFO-JFK. Then you could redeposit those miles and perhaps then have enough for 2 business class tickets JFK-BCN. Or if your dates are at all flexible, would altering your itinerary a day or 2 make flights "cheaper". AA Advantage program seems to have great variability in miles required and availabiity in different classes on different days (have been checking and booking Boston-Buenos Aires and there are a number of days whereI can fly cheaper in Business than the required Economy miles).

If any of these maneuvers would work, make the reservation on the phone with a person who can check availability of 2 seats at the same time - I prefer to do everything on-line, but we have done this when doing something a little complicated.

Two suggestions, but first a couple of questions...

I'm assuming it was the JFK-BCN seat that vanished, right?

You were booking this online, one at a time, rather than through the agent, right?

So first, a lesson to be learned: When trying to book two or more redemption seats, it's worth spending the money to have a phone agent do it. On some routes, and JFK-BCN is a prime example, AA will only release one or - occasionally - two seats into award or upgrade inventory at a time. As Jeff_Costa_Rica says, they want to sell those seats for money rather than redemptions, but they know they can't sell them all, and that those unredeemed miles represent a contingent liability on their books. So they release them by dribs and drabs.

Second, JFK-BCN has one flight a day, so there's no redundancy. However, AA has umpteen flights to other European cities every day, from several US airports. One solution would be to cancel your reservation and rebook the two of you using an alternate routing. Don't know your dates, but for example on a random check in mid-November, I can see anywhere from 2 to 10 business class seats available most days from JFK and/or ORD to Heathrow; or from Dallas to Madrid, or New York to Paris, etc.

You'd then have to change planes to a partner airline at your European gateway in order to get to Barcelona, but that wouldn't add to the mileage cost, although it would add some hours obviously.

The thing is, (a) there's seldom any trouble with AA getting award seats released by their partner airlines (e.g. British Airways or Iberia) for the intra-Europe leg, and (b) <i>you can't see</i> partner availability on-line at aa.com. All you can see on aa.com are flights actually operated by AA, so in this case your options for Barcelona are... one, the JFK-BCN flight.

By canceling your reservation on the JFK-BCN you'll have to pay a change fee, and you'll have to pay a phone booking fee for any reservation that involves a partner, since you can't do it online, but I virtually promise you'll get seats together to Barcelona.

Thank you so much for your good suggestions. Fodor's at its finest.

A couple of added details that I omitted in the original post for the sake of brevity. My reservation is on hold for about four more days, so if AA clears DH's request, I can finalize my booking, and we're good to go. If DH's request isn't cleared before the hold on my reservation expires, DH can buy miles for $150 to bring his account to !00K, which is the next award level for business/first (award seats at the 100K level seem to be plentiful).

I phoned AA late today, and found out DH's request hasn't cleared, so I will phone again tomorrow afternoon. If it doesn't clear within the next 24 hours, I'll ask about the routing possibilities you suggested, Gardyloo. If that isn't possible then DH will buy the needed miles and book at the 100K level.

Today's sympathetic rez person said her guess was about 50-50 that the request would be honored. If I had 20/20 hindsight I'd have booked by phone with a real live agent instead of trying to do it on line. Who knew?

Stay tuned! And thanks again.

PS: Yes it was the JFK to BCN leg that vanished.

Realizing that we were spending way too much time trying to outguess AA, DH bought miles to get to the 100K level. He then booked a 100K Anytime Award and we're all set.

Thanks for your help, Jeff, gail, and gardyloo.