I had a terrific experience with American Airlines' online help phone line today.

I purchased tickets for our vacation on Friday but discovered last night that I could've booked the vacation for an extra night for the same airfare. D'oh!! Another night in paradise at the same cost?! I obviously wasn't using my brain Friday and totally shortchanged me and hubby.

So, I called AA today, totally prepared to beg or ask to use miles to pay the ticket change fee of $100/ ticket, but the agent I spoke with said she'd try to do what she could for me and she came back after a brief wait and said "no problem, we've switched your tickets to the later flight at no charge."

How nice!!!

As long as the booking was not ticketed then it's not a problem.

I have had bookings ticketed within an hour but I also had bookings ticketed weeks later.

Kudos to the AAgent to actually look into the possibility.

Have a great vacation!

Thanks, AA! Shocking thing is, it WAS ticketed (she asked- my reservations page said "Status: Ticketed&quot-- cool, huh!?

Later on, it occured to me that since it was 9/11, and AA suffered such a blow on 9/11 five years prior, maybe she was in a gracious or good samaritan kind of mood, ya know? Just trying to do something nice for a fellow human being? Either way, I told her "bless your heart!" So I hope my being nice made her day a little easier.

Very nice! Sometimes the little favors from the airlines happen when we least expect them

I have a similar story with United from a few years ago. In January, we bought tickets for a European vacation in August, the end of which would bump right up against the start of our school year. A few months later (well after tickets were issued), we received a final school calendar and realized that school would start a week later than we thought. We decided to bite the bullet, pay the change fee and extend the trip a bit.

The UA agent asked why I was making the change, and I explained it just as above. I did not ask for or exepect any special treatment. She finished making the changes, then said, "I'm going to waive the change fee for two of your three tickets." At $200 apiece, that was very nice, and very unexpected.

It's nice to have some good things to say about the airlines, especially the beating that AA was taking on another thread recently.
We also had a pleasant experience with AA in booking recently. We were trying to use FF miles for next summer's trip, so started with the first leg, knowing we would have to wait two weeeks to book the return. We thought we would fly from LAX to LHR, then onto Milan with BA. The reservations person looked at our plans, then booked us non-stop on Swiss Air in business class to Milan, on option we had not considered. And Swiss Air has almost flat seats in Business on this flight.
We were very pleased with AA, and I have to say, our experiences with them have been very good for almost all our overseas trips.

Swiss has a non-stop LAX-MXP?

I do believe you will be connecting in ZRH.......

Also, unfortunately Swiss will no longer be AAdvantage partner after 10/31/07, so do enjoy your flight as it will be one of the last times we can use AA miles for a Swiss flight.

and for anybody else thinking about using AA miles on Swiss - you better hurry as all award travel has to be booked by 10/31/2006......

Sorry to confuse anyone, but I type too fast sometimes. Yes, I meant the non-stop to Zurich, and we were surprised because we knew the Swiss Air partnership was ending and that's why we weren't even thinking Swiss Air. I'm really not that much of a airhead.

We're flying Swiss Air from Zurich to Johannesburg in January--using AA FF miles.

Just got back home from yet another pleasant experience on AA! Yes, I am an AA addict.

I believe that their domestic routes are using more Boeing's lately than MD-80's, which is great with me! I'm more comfortable in the 757's and 767's. Anyone else notice that? My usual route is LAX-ORD.

AA has not bought any used or new planes and has not brought back any from the "storage/graveyard" in Arizona, so what you are noticing is route standardization of the fleet. What that means is that AA has implemented a new system, using certain plane models on certain routes. AA has seen many benefits and cost savings at the same time. If a plane needs to be replaced, it's easier to accomodate the paxs with the same type of plane as opposed to replacing a 757 (~185 seats) with a MD-80 (~130 seats).

That doesn't mean they don't fly different planes on some routes. On your regular route, LAX-ORD, they use 3 different types, MD-80s, 757s and 767s. AA scheduling plans accordingly as to which plane will be used at what time of the day, or how many seats can they sell on 8am flight or 12pm flight?

(btw, MD-80s are (kinda) like Boeings. MD merged with Boeing many years ago )