What to do when airline reservations are missing

Mike,

Have you tried checking with your record locator?

Have you called American Airlines?

I sure hope your reservation is found.

I’ve flown on AA for most of my trips and have not had any issues.

Best of luck!

Check your confirmation number. You should have received that when you made your reservation Your confirmation number is key to finding out what is happening.

Also check your credit card statements to make sure they didn’t refund your money.

Priscilla is right, if you purchased on AA's website you need to contact them to get it cleared up. When you say you have a printout with your flight numbers is that a confirmation from AA? If it is, there should be a confirmation # and then there shouldn't be any problem getting it straightened out with AA's customer service.

Did those emails telling you of a change request you contact the airline to agree to those changes to keep your flights?

If you contact them and provide your original locator number, that 6 characters which uniquely identify your ticket, they should be able to reinstate your flights or at least something close to what you had with no additional charges. The sooner you talk with them the more options you will have and the sooner you put this behind you.

While trip insurance probably would have been a good option, it really won't help if AA refunds you in total if your flights have been cancelled.

Edit: Something similar happened to me while in Europe once. A segment for my return home disappeared out of my reservation. No notice. No email. Just there one day and gone the next. I called the airline (they had a local number to call from the country I was in at the time) and after quite a long time of ifs and maybe, they were able to put me on a better route home that eliminated one stop resulting in me getting home 6 hours earlier -- and they put me in actual 1st class at no additional charge.

Just curious, but why didn't you call AA before posting here?

As noted above, you'll need your 6 character, alpha-numeric reservation code (PNR, record locator, whatever AA calls it) but you need to call them ASAP and see what happened.

(I am a bit concerned for you about the 3 emails they sent notifying you of a change--did you look at your reservation after receiving these emails? Did you accept whatever changes that were shown? I'm not an AA flyer, but I know UA and Delta will sometimes "accept" these changes for you if you don't act after some period of time passes after the notification.)

This just happened to us on Delta. We never received any emails, but I decided about a month ahead of the trip to check my reservation to make sure there were no time changes, and the online system couldn't find my reservation. I called Delta and on their side it showed my flights had been cancelled. They couldn't tell me why, but did ask if I had used a travel agent. I hadn't, i had booked them on the phone through KLM. Luckily they were able to put me back on the same flights, no harm done. Very weird though, I will definitely be checking my reservations more regularly in the future. Good luck, hope it's an easy solution.

The last time (2017) I booked an American Airlines flight, AA sent me a confirming e-mail that included both:
"record locator" (a 6 charater alphanumeric) and a ticket number.
One or the other should be what you need when you call AA's customer service to resolve you problem.

Does your credit card statement showing the purchase have you AA ticket number?

Definitely check the flight by the record locator, the combo of 6 numbers/letters for your flight. If it still doesn't show up that way on the AA website, then call them. Have all of your information in hand when you call. Date purchased. Ticket number on the emails. The record locator.

Once AA changed one of my flights and changed the record locator. I tried to check in for my flight and no flight! I had to call, and they told me they'd rebooked the entire ticket with a new number. I hope that this is something as simple for you.

My credit card statements do not show any refunds From American Airlines, and no refunds for the amount I spent. I wrote them a short message, using their website. I Included both my 6-letter record locator and my ticket number, which are on the printout I had printed the day I bought the tickets, in the form I had to fill out before sending my message. I put all the flight numbers and approximate departure times, in the message. A phone call wouldn't be as useful, without any record that such a conversation happened, if my tickets still are not reinstated. But I'll have to call them if I don't get an e-mail reply. Or maybe my tickets were never cancelled and just the website is not working right. People can make mistakes and a disaster should not happen where I show up at the airport and then find out that they don't have my reservations.

Mike, the reason for a phone call is to get an immediate reply. If you don't get this straightened out on the phone, you can (and should) follow up with written communication.

Since you have solid evidence that you have a valid ticket, they cannot deny that fact. Whatever caused the glitch, you want to get it resolved ASAP. Phone is the quickest way to accomplish that.

What you are describing is really not that unusual. There's no need to panic. But there are many lessons to be learned here...

1. When you book a flight, you are not done, and you shouldn't just expect to head to the airport and fly.
2. Keep good records. Know the airline's booking code/confirmation code, and always be able to find that easily.
3. When booking, be sure you provide the airline with a real, working email that you actually check regularly - not "[email protected]" or other nonsense email. When there's a change to your flight, they will attempt to let you know.
   
4. As the weeks or months roll by between the booking and the flight (I generally book my flights 11 months in advance), you should go online and check the status of your flights every once in a while, to ensure nothing has changed. Check more frequently as the departure date approaches.
5. Do not be shocked if your flights change. Flights change (and get canceled) all the time. This is not a disaster. In fact, it's often a very good thing, and you can make it work to your advantage - but only if you're paying attention and are pro-active.
6. If you just book flights and forget about them for months, then head to the airport, there's a very good chance you may be in for an unpleasant surprise.

Call AA

There have been times with my Alaska flights that a change is made to a flight, maybe just 15 minutes, but it takes a phone call for them to do whatever they do, so that I can see them online again

Now is NOT the time for panic nor wishing for AA to perish

As much as I hate to use the phone, this is the point where you need to call AA. Do not count on a timely response via email on their website.

You COULD try using social media like Twitter, but if you don't have a response within 24 hours to a pressing question like this one, you need to call them.

I had trouble once like that with British Airways. While I did try writing an email, the only way I finally got it resolved was to call BA on the phone. Yes, I got transferred too many times and had to call back a number of times but I was able to resolve it.

I hate using the phone especially with airlines but it's the only way to resolve this issue. Good luck. Also usually airlines social media will advise to call their customer service.

I had the same experience with American Airlines a couple of years ago. It was fixed with a phone call. I don't recall the details, but I do recall the stress before I called them.

I just checked my AA flights for December. When I logged in on the app, there were no upcoming flights listed, but going to the actual website, the flights were there, but there had been a change to one flight that needs to be addressed. I guess I'll call reservations tonight.

Problem is fixed. Everything looks ok. I called the airline’s phone number twice. The first time, when the staff answered, they said ‘hello’ but then immediately pushed the wrong button, transfering me to the survey, the kind where companies want you to validate that they dealt with you ok. The second time, my flights were visible on the employee’s computer. They decided that there was a glitch called, ‘your frequent flyer number was not attached to your flight information, but I am attaching it now” ... whatever ... they had not lost my reservations ... now my flights appear when checking the airline’s website using the password or the given “frequent flyer number”.

Mike, that is GREAT news! I'm glad it was fixed relatively quickly and that you checked on your reservations this far ahead of travel.

Now, all that's left is a trial pack and you are good to go, lol!!

Glad to hear it got resolved relatively painlessly. Thank you for coming back and letting us know.

Thanks for the report back on your successful resolution. Calling works.

Not having your reservation linked to your FF account makes sense if you have been checking status through your FF portal. Airline websites often have the option of checking status without an "airline account" by entering your booking reference (the 6 digit alphanumeric) and last name. Something to keep in mind for your next adventure.

As a note to others, in North America, American has a 24/7 phone contact. Some European airlines do not have 24 hour phone desks or weekend service. When my weekend flight departing Prague was cancelled I had to call the airline's Prague airport number to get rebooked. (Flight did not show up on the airline's or airport's flight status).

Thanks for the update Mike!
That’s great news!

Where are you going on this trip?

Have a wonderful trip!

I had a similar problem with Hawaiian Air. When checking about my upcoming flights I saw one was not listed. I did book directly with the airline (always a good idea in case something goes wrong) and had a confirmation number. I called the 1-800 number for the airline and the helpful person did some checking and them came back to tell me that it was now listed in my upcoming flights. And, i will be taking one of those flights on Thursday - back to the islands.

Yes, we live in a computer centric electronic world, but sometime the only thing that works to resolve an issue is a phone call.

Glad whatever caused the issue was resolved.

Have a great trip.

Mike, glad everything was resolved. Because of your post I am now checking my May Delta flights weekly just in case there’s a problem. I‘m just distrusting enough that I need to catch and resolve problems ASAP.

Delta will give you a giant flashing message when you're impacted by Schedule Change Saturday. And then most of the time you discover that they've moved one flight by 3 minutes and it doesn't impact minimum allowed connection times or anything relevant.

United has apparently been having problems with flights disappearing from accounts as part of a rough general web site 'enhancement'. Call to verify flight info if you're impacted.

Now that you see how some problems are best resolved by calling the airline directly, it's a good idea to note down the contact number for American Airlines in your European country as well as their US number - just in case you have a flight issue while in Europe (as I did on my last trip while in Paris).

Here's where to find the contact information for each country for AA (scroll down to "Europe and Russia"): https://www.aa.com/i18n/customer-service/contact-american/reservations-and-ticket-changes.jsp

I traveled constantly for almost 40 years. For anything important dealing with airlines I always call them directly. That is the only way to resolve issues quickly (although the calls can go for hours). If I encounter travel issues while in transit, I call. I once passed my phone through a scanner with United on the line trying to fix a flight delay problem...Don't stand in line (until it is absolutely required) and don't rely on email to sort out issues. Call. You'll be amazed at what a customer service agent can do for you, and especially if you have a mileage account with the airline. Oh, and be polite, patient and don't let on that you have all the answers. Service agents cannot stand pushy know it all customers. They deal with AH's all day long. Be kind.

The down side of calling is that if you're trying to get through when the airline is in serious service recovery mode and you don't have access to an elite status line, wait times can be very long. I had a two hour callback time with Delta earlier this year when I was trying to get through shortly after a snowstorm hit New York City and they were trying to get a lot of people rebooked.