We booked a trip to Athens for May on our air miles with American.
Usually it takes a day or so to get ticked when using miles. This time we have been waiting for over 3 weeks and still no tickets. When I call them there answer is we are in the que.
Anyone have any insight as to what they are up to?
Usually ticketed asap. Stay on phone queue. American is my go to airline but United experience. Was on hold for 1.5 hours. And it’s the weekend. You are in the queue for the ticket? No I hope haven’t heard of that.
Can't you check online? When I use miles to book airline tickets, I can see them instantly on the Delta website. You should be able to see them on your American online account.
Do you have a PNR and have the miles been deducted? I'd be a little more comfortable if they were.
And Shaul Kel - I'm quite sure the OP means he did speak with AA, and was told he was in the ticketing queue. Not that he's been sitting on a phone hold.
In the last 3-4 months I have booked at least 2 dozen award tickets on AA (lots of double bookings for different destinations depending on COVID restrictions, lots of cancellations and rebookings, etc.) and the most any of these bookings has taken is about 3 hours to be finalized. If it is 3 weeks, I would think something is wrong. Do you have miles to book another set, then cancel the original (assuming the price in miles hasn't increased)?
Also, it does pay to recheck, I've rebooked a number of tickets when the price has fallen.
One other thing to check - go into My bookings and see if your flights are booked (incl PNR). If not, I would doubt v much the tickets have been processed.
I book plenty of flights with miles and it doesn't take more than an hour or so to get confirmation.
As stated....
Look at your bookings You should have a record locater. I use the AA app and all of my flights show up on the first page. If no locater, there is a problem.
Check your AAdvantage miles account...were the miles deducted? If no, the reservation didn't go through.
Did you get a confirmation screen when booking saying you would receive an email when the tickets were finalized?
Try calling the Advantage desk rather than general reservations. I did and was offerd a callback. Use that.
I've booked (and mostly cancelled) literally dozens of flights in the past few months using American Airlines miles. It is (mostly) smooth and highly predictable (and, I must say, American Airlines probably has the most consumer-friendly policies of any US airline, except perhaps Alaska Airlines, when it comes to flexibility for changes/cancellations on award tickets - so good on them).
Usually it takes a day or so to get ticked when using miles.
Yes and no.
If your flight is entirely on American Airlines "metal" (just their planes, nobody else's), then ticketing should be instantaneous.
If your flight includes any segments on American Airlines PARTNER airlines, then ticketing generally happens within 24 hours. Initially your booking will show as "on request." That's because different airlines' systems only interact with each other in limited ways; to do non-trivial things (like book a ticket, assign a specific seat, etc.) it requires some time (and often a human is required to perform some tasks). Until you see your trip status change to "ticketed" you do NOT officially have a rock-solid booking.
You need to call American Airlines and talk with them. Set aside some time, it may take hours.
FWIW, I have had generally good luck lately with accepting their "callback" option rather than waiting on hold (2 recent experiences: The system said I would receive a call back within 2 hours; I got one call-back as soon as I hung up the phone; the other time I got a call back about 90 minutes later). Be patient, be prepared to wait a while. Try calling very late at night or super-early in the morning.
IMPORTANT: Look at your booking on the aa.com website. Does it pull up your detailed itinerary? If not, worry more. If yes, look to see if any flight segments are on partner airlines or listed as codeshares. Look for the Confirmation Code/Reservation Code/PNR numbers -- there should be one for your entire itinerary that's used by American Airlines. Below the AA number, look for one (or more) additional confirmation codes/reservation codes/PNR numbers for any other airline(s) on your itinerary. Every airline uses their own number -- their different systems usually can't "talk to each other" and when dealing directly with that airline, every airline uses their own system.
Make a note of any numbers for your flights on other airlines (always do this!!!), then contact that other airline directly, and give them their own number for your flight.
It's possible that your itinerary is fine, it has been ticketed, and you are good to go -- but that happy status is just not being shown in American Airlines' system. I am in that same boat: I booked flights from Seattle to Bangkok using AA miles for a trip in April. Flights are on AA's partner Japan Air Lines ("JAL"). Later, JAL cancelled my flight and moved both my outbound and my return flights by 24 hours. Neither AA nor JAL ever advised me of that, but I could see something went wrong (I tend to my flights obsessively). JAL has us all good, same flights just 1 day later, but on AA's website the status still shows "on request". With the JAL confirmation codes, I can log in to JAL's website, pick seats, even choose my meal (flying business class), and all is confirmed on JAL's end. AA has never updated our flight status on the website. I called and spoke with two AA agents, both just shrugged and said things look OK to them. So you may have a similar situation, where the AA partner airline is all thumbs up, but AA itself has failed to reflect that status. In that case, check with the partner airline directly since AA is dropping the ball.
I'm seeing this on multiple flights I have booked with AA, so it's not a one-off issue.
If your itinerary does NOT include any partner segments, then I would assume AA has just dropped the ball. Set aside some time and call them.
Hope that helps. Good luck.
