AA FF Miles Question

[hercamore]

Hi all,

I've never booked an award seat on AA before. So, I have milles and have found an award seat Jan 3 to MCO, but the flight time is late in day. Not a good time to be leaving MN in the winter.

If I booked this time, would I have the option of changing to an earlier flight that day if regular seats are available?

herc.

 

[gw_lit]

Probably not. It would most likely have to be a "seat" designated for FF redemption availability. If the flight is already full, even if a FF seat held by someone using frequent flyer miles opens up, it may not be available again since AA could most likely sell it and not make it available for FF redemption.

You could alternatively look into flying into TPA, there seems to be better availability to/from Tampa using FF miles. Its only about a 90 minute drive from TPA to WDW barring construction delays or accidents on I-4. Of course, if you're planning on using Magical Express, that probably wouldn't be an option.

 

[hercamore]

I will look into Tampa.

We always rent a car, and my DD actually wanted to do a day at the beach. Depends on weather, of course.

Thanks, herc

 

[hercamore]

Yes, I checked Tampa and there are more open ff seats on more dates, but the airfare for my DD is $150 more than flying into MCO!



herc.

 

[Horace Horsecollar]

Hi all,

I've never booked an award seat on AA before. So, I have milles and have found an award seat Jan 3 to MCO, but the flight time is late in day. Not a good time to be leaving MN in the winter.

If I booked this time, would I have the option of changing to an earlier flight that day if regular seats are available?

AA allocates capacity on its flights to various fare classes, including AAdvantage award inventory, based on maximizing the yield for each flight. So one flight may have only 2 AAdvantage plan-ahead seats allocated, and another flight may have 20. Some flights will have a large inventory of discount seats, while highly popular flights will have far fewer. The plan is that, at some point, all that's left are full fare coach seats, with the supply equal to the projected demand.

As the flight gets closer, AA can rebalance the inventories, possibly even adding in more AAdvantage plan-ahead inventory to fill seats that might otherwise stay empty.

AA used to charge $100 to change AAdvantage itineraries, but the last I heard is that there's now only a charge if your routing changes. (You'll want to double check this.)

So, the answer is that you can book what's currently available and then change to another flight date or time on the same routing, if AAdvantage inventory becomes available on the flight to which you want to change.

But you can't change just because "regular seats are available," only if AAdvantage inventory becomes available.

 

[NancyIL]

Check for award seats at www.aa.com every day. People change their plans and seats become available all the time. I wouldn't change to Tampa unless you REALLY want to fly there. Once ticketed, you'll pay $100 per ticket to change the routing should you later decide you'd rather fly into Orlando. If it gets to be Jan. 3rd and you still haven't been able to change your flight, you can stand-by on AA for an earlier flight that day.