UPDATE – Looks like I was wrong about the free award cancellations within 24 hours, so only do this trick if you actually do plan on ticketing the reservation.
TL:DR
Book award travel on AA.com with your origin and destination with any date in the future if your dates aren’t available. Call them up and then ‘change’ your reservation.
The long backstory
For my trip to Australia later this year, I had booked Virgin Australia to get down there already, and I also booked my flight back from Tokyo to the USA on Singapore Airlines Suites class. My only problem now was how to get from Australia to Tokyo. And that’s where Qantas comes in. Qantas is an American Airlines partner, and they can bookable online. Last month, American Airlines announced that they would waive phone ticketing fees for flights that cannot be booked on aa.com (see picture.) I was naive to assume that that meant ALL itineraries that could not be booked online.
Multi-cabin Itinerary
So I sorta knew what day I wanted to fly from Australia to Japan, and I also knew I had the option of Japan Airlines (also an AA partner). I was waiting to see when Japan Airlines was going to upgrade their schedule to fly their new 777-300ER from Sydney to Tokyo. Here is a nice review here. However, when I was searching recently, I found out that the JAL flight is at 9AM whereas the Qantas flight was at 9PM (redeye). Well, since vacation days are scarce for me, I didn’t want to waste an entire vacation day in the air. That’s when I knew I REALLY wanted to book the Qantas flight instead. Since I had already booked my flight back to the States, now it was a matter of deciding how much time I wanted in Tokyo. Once I decided that, I now realistically only had an option of 2 days. When I looked on AA.com, 1 of the days had no business class availability. The other one did. GREAT, right? Well, the problem now was that I needed to get from Auckland to Sydney, and there was no business class availability for that 1 hour flight. However, there were plenty of coach seats. When I tried to book from Auckland to Tokyo on AA.com, the system wasn’t smart enough to put me on coach for the first leg and business for the 2nd leg. That meant I had to call.
Hold Frustrations
My first mistake when calling AA was that I said “reservations” instead of “award travel.” Well, I waited 7 minutes before “reservations” picked up. I told her I wanted to make an award reservation; she told me she needed me to transfer me. Next thing you know, I was on hold for 20+ minutes. I was so frustrated I just hung up. I was so mad, I even Tweeted AA telling them they needed a call-back system. Well, it turns out that they DO have a call-back system, but since I was transferred through the back way, I didn’t get that option. Later that day, I decided to call back again and this time I said “award travel.” Sure enough, I was asked if I wanted a callback or hold for 30+ minutes. That was a no-brainer. Thirty minutes later, a nice British lady called me. I gave her all the information. She punched it in and told me my taxes were something like $120 for 2 people. I then asked her to break down the $120 for me. She said, it was something like $60 per person; $20ish were airport taxes and $40ish for fees. I then asked her if there were any phone ticketing fees [since they were supposed to be waived.] She told me, “That’s odd. You’re the 2nd person today who’ve asked about them. Hold on.” Next thing you know it’s been 5 minutes and I’m still on hold. I got so mad again that I hung up. This time, I was mad because a) it didn’t sound like she was charging me any phone ticketing fees and b) she put me on hold to find out why I wasn’t being charged and probably wanted to charge me. ARGH!
“Can I speak to a supervisor?”
Later that night, I wanted to call back to actually ticket the itinerary. Luckily, the first rep put the itinerary on hold, and I could view it online. Sure enough, after a 30 minute call back, a lady who sounded like she was from Kentucky answered. I told her I wanted to ticket my itinerary. She told me it would be 90K miles and $120 in fees. Once again, I asked her to break it down. This time, she told me that there was a phone ticketing fee of $40 per ticket. I told her that those should be waived since I couldn’t book the multi-cabin itinerary online. She gave me a stern, “NO! I can’t waive the fee.” I then asked to speak to a supervisor. She then put me on hold for about 5 minutes, and I was able to speak to a supervisor. The supervisor got on the line and told me that Qantas flights could be booked online. I told him, “I knew that, but I can’t book the multi-cabin online.” He then punched in some stuff (my guess was that he was checking if I was right.) After a couple of minutes, he came back on and told me that he’d waive the fees and that it’d be $40 total in fees.
Conclusion
My wife asked me right after, “How long did you spend to save $80?” I told her probably an hour to 2, but that it was the principle of it. Anyway, it dawned on me right after that I could have just booked the Auckland to Tokyo flight online for a different date (there was a date with both legs having business availability). I could call the agent after booking the ticket online and have them change the date and cabin at no charge (I would not book business and change to coach though; I don’t know if they’ll refund you that difference, so only upgrade with this trick; don’t downgrade). AA doesn’t charge you any fees for changing dates (you can’t change origination city or destination for free though), so that’s why this trick works.