Help! American Airlines--330 days out???

[Cathyb]

Thought I had it straight and now I am doubting me -- Is the day to get frequent flier mile seats for American Airlines 330 days or 332 days out?

I went to Awardgrabber.com and it says most airlines are 330 but when you put the date leaving -- it computes it at today+333.

Thank you for any help you can pass on here

[blr666]

Also, if you are going for one week, do you call on the departure date or do you wait for the return date to be within 330 days? Thanks.

[Aussiedog]

As I recall (I did this 6 months ago), you book your outbound flight at 330 days and call back to reserve the return at 330 days of that date. I do these on the phone, and the service rep tells me exactly when to call back to book the return.

Ann

[Art]

That 330 day FF seating loading thing is moving into the urban legend category.

330 (or 331) days is the earliest that most airlines might make FF seats available. When seats are made available now seems to be in the domain of the revenue management folks, i.e., "Let's see how many paying customers there are before we give any seats away."

The result is that a computer program somewhere determines when FF seats are going to be available on what flights.

Good luck.

Art

[Aussiedog]

Originally Posted by Art

That 330 day FF seating loading thing is moving into the urban legend category.

Unless I missed a newsletter AA is still using this timeline though. In any event, if you call them now they will tell you the exact date to call back for the outbound reservation. This worked perfectly for me.

Good luck!

Ann

[nfwjlw]

I recently booked AA ff...
I had to call because i wanted a stop over on the return
at about 332 days out (i called 333 first) the date i wanted showed up
i booked the outbound and put it on hold for 5 days...
5 days later i called and extended the hold 5 more days...
did that 3 times until my return showed up on their screen 332 days out..
WORKED FOR ME
JERRY

[carlrocky]

With all the airlines cutting flights, be prepared for your flight to be changed to a new schedule. What you get may not be what you asked for. ie travel time, lay overs, flying thru chicago instead texas for example. good luck, I hope all goes well

[carlrocky]

With all the airlines cutting flights, be prepared for your flight to be changed to a new schedule. What you get may not be what you asked for. ie travel time, lay overs, flying thru chicago instead texas for example. good luck, I hope all goes well.

[x3 skier]

Originally Posted by Art

That 330 day FF seating loading thing is moving into the urban legend category.

The result is that a computer program somewhere determines when FF seats are going to be available on what flights.

Art

My take is that is the first time any seats show up for FF miles. As time goes on, more may be offered but with capacity reductions, they will be few if any. Many times in the past, I have been able to get seats by periodically checking as the year went on. The future, however, does not look quite as promising.

Cheers

[Cathyb]

Interesting discovery!!! At 12:05AM we got the first half of our reservations for June 28 non-stop to Maui by calling AA-- BUT when I look onsite, they were not even offered! In fact 6/27 wasn't even open at that time.

Is this something others have discovered in the past???

[Pit]

Originally Posted by Cathyb

Interesting discovery!!! At 12:05AM we got the first half of our reservations for June 28 non-stop to Maui by calling AA-- BUT when I look onsite, they were not even offered! In fact 6/27 wasn't even open at that time.

Is this something others have discovered in the past???

Searching online, I get the message "American Airlines can only offer flights up to 329 days in advance." So you can get them at 330 days out by calling?

[pjrose]

Originally Posted by Aussiedog

As I recall (I did this 6 months ago), you book your outbound flight at 330 days and call back to reserve the return at 330 days of that date. I do these on the phone, and the service rep tells me exactly when to call back to book the return.

Ann

But then aren't you booking 1 way instead of round-trip? Doesn't that mess up the number of miles you need?

[Cathyb]

I believe so -- at 12:05AM today (Saturday) we were able to get flights out of LAX to Maui for June 28, 2009 and were given a temporary reservation number. We now have to get the return seats before all is finished.

[iconnections]

Cathy, I had Alaska Air do it for me and later I talked to AA and they told me that they are still very busy booking flights to HI so people are still going there. You know that Alaska flies now direct to Maui too from LAX.

[GregT]

I just went through this, and it was very difficult.

I figured out from trial and error that the schedule loads into the system 330/331 days in advance, and if I called starting around 10:15pm PT, I might be able to get it right when the schedule loads (so far me, it was 331 days in advance, by an hour and a half, but 330 days per Central Time). Sometimes it didn't load and at, and I even waited up until 1am in the morning waiting for it to load -- I'd call every 10 minutes or so to see if it was loaded, but it never did.

I think AA.com is 2 days later, and therefore it will be impossible to get a Friday/Saturday night return if you are counting on AA.com.

What I did is that I booked my June 12th outbound, by calling at 10:15pm, and continuing to call until the schedule loaded, which that night was around 11pm. They held it for 5 days for me, but would not extend beyond that date for me when I called a few days later to try to extend.

Accordingly, I issued the ticket (paid the fee for talking to a person) with a June 12th outbound and a return on June 17th (which I never intended to take).

I then waited a week, and started to call again, initially getting a return on June 23rd, then calling the next night and pushing it to June 24th, and then finally calling to push it to June 25th. I couldn't get June 26th, my desired return date, because someone else was doing the same thing, and grabbed the seats right before I got them. Keep in mind -- this was 10-15 minutes after the schedule loaded, and the 35,000 FF award tix were already gone.

What was interesting/frustrating was the inconsistency in when the schedule loaded.

I will also point out there appeared to be better availability on the OGG/LAX redeye flight versus the afternoon, as well as the HNL/LAX flights, both afternoon and redeyes. For me, it was just the afternoon flight OGG/LAX that appeared highly restricted, but I was trying to get it for my young children. OGG/DFW always appeared accessible.

Good luck, and don't get discouraged. AA representatives (more than one) did tell me they expect to get more tix FF loaded over time as they better understand the loads.