Flights No Longer Bookable On USAirways.com?
American Airlines has been taking very logical steps forward to complete their merger with US Airways. They tackled the loyalty programs first and that process went pretty darn smoothly for most. And, not too long ago, they announced they would start moving forward reservations (for flights on October 17, 2015 and after) to the American Airlines ticketing system.
I had it in my head that would mean that any flights booked for travel before October 17th would still follow the current path, wherein you book US Airways flights on US Airways ticket stock and the same for American Airlines. Codeshares are painful for upgrades and other such items, but booking “metal” on the corresponding ticket stock (again, a US Airways operated flight on their own ticket stock) would continue to be the right path for any travel through mid-October. Methinks that might have changed?
I was trying to book a short-term trip for September this morning on USAirways.com and got a message redirecting me to the American Airlines website (AA.com) to finish the booking. I tried a handful of city pairs and, even in instances where American didn’t operate the route (IAD-CLT, for example), the US Airways site still directed me to AA.com:
Interesting, but not sure what that means for tickets I need to book on US Airways metal. Maybe I’ll get an upgrade, may be I won’t.
I called the Executive Platinum desk and the agent confirmed that tickets are no longer bookable on the US Airways website. I just booked one 48 hours ago, so this would seem to be a fairly new development (and still not confirmed by AA in any sort of public way).
To be continued…..
You can still book US flight numbers on the American Website.. its a bit trickier as you have to tell the search to look at all one world carriers.. then generally at the bottom of the results you’ll see the US flight numbers. Another issue with this method is that you won’t be able to do a ‘hold’ as its not all AA flight numbers. This isn’t a big deal but if you need to cancel within 24 hours you may get the run around because they are not used to processing refunds (you are best requesting the web support team to do the refund.. you may even have to walk them through the booking process to prove there is no hold option. Its a major PITA and really should be a DOT issue but my complaint went unanswered) Good luck! viva EP upgrades!
Cakflyer, I tried looking for the US Airways flight numbers I needed on AA.com and they didn’t come up. Not sure if it was a fluke, as the routing was a bit odd. I thought about trying to plug it in as multi-city, but then just called EXP desk and they ticketed within minutes.
Wonder if this means all the prices will match between the codeshare and prime flights now.
I found it interesting that a flight I booked yesterday for travel today US metal on AA codes had a separate different record locator for each US and AA.
However when searching aa.com for this, I had to click All Airlines to get any results at all to the search. American nor American plus Oneworld gave me the US metal flights.
Tenmoc, they’ve been issuing record locators for both for a while now. My understanding now is that this is a temporary glitch and the US website will live again someday soon.
And with the US Airways website, goes some of the lower fares — no joke, was looking at flights to Bogota, $234, but now its in the $283 range. Its only ~$50 but, sheesh.
Trevor, sorry to hear that. Bummer.