American Airlines Brings Back 24 Hour Reservation Holds

Update: The test period for removing the hold option from the American Airlines website has ended, and the hold option has been restored.

The September 14, 2022 post is the original one.

The option to put a flight on a 24 hour hold has been removed by American Airlines. Competitors haven't had this option for a long time. It is one of the things that makes American Airlines different.

American stopped offering 24 hour holds six years ago. It was still offered on the AA.com website despite the fact that they stopped offering it through reservations. The option is no longer available for most customers. A spokesman for American Airlines confirmed.

We continue to evaluate our product offerings to customers on aa.com and understand customers may need flexibility when booking travel plans. Customers whose travel plans change after they purchased a ticket with American can receive a full refund if they cancel the ticket within 24 hours of purchase.

The airline is evaluating how customers use the option for a reservation hold through the website. Since they never introduced the ability to apply trip credits to reservations on hold, they want to see if forcing customers to use trip credits right away could reduce calls to reservations. Eliminating the hold option gives them a counterfactual to test against, but I don't know if they'll bring it back.

24 hour holds are great for customers and the airlines best and most dedicated customers because they reduce time spent on the phone and reduce errors.

• I put a reservation on hold precisely when I am going to need help over the phone. That way the agent has something concrete to work with and the call goes more quickly. It is more time consuming and error-prone to have to build complicated itineraries with agents over the phone, so holding it first is better.
• I can also secure the reservation, and complete the transaction over the phone at my and the airline’s convenience when customer service hold times aren’t interminable.
• This might be a reservation that I want to confirm an upgrade on contemporaneous with ticketing, or where I want to have an agent refare the reservation (sell me a more expensive ticket, in a higher fare class than what the website will book, such as to be eligible to use a Business ExtrAA upgrade). These are things you cannot do at AA.com.
• I also may just need to secure the reservation and seats and don’t have my credit card handy. So I make the booking and come back later to pay. Without that convenience I may just not come back later, American’s pricing may change, and I may wind up booking with someone else.

There are tradeoffs for the airlines. Not every reservation that gets put on hold gets a ticket. The inventory is tied up for 24 hours. American couldn't present the fare to someone else if someone held the last cheap seat. It's possible they will lose a sale.

Most airlines offer 24 hour refunds. American Airlines was offering both a 24 hour hold and a 24 hour refund.

You can buy a ticket and cancel it at the same time if you purchase at least 2 days prior to departure. When booking 7 days in advance, American used to only allow this.

It isn't always a substitute for holds. If you paid with a flight credit from a previous trip, you can't get refunds.

There is still a 5 day hold option for redemption.

I wrote on March 20 that American would be changing to 24 hour refunds on April 1. American tried to tell me that it wasn't true, but it turned out that it was. There is still a way to go.

In general.

As an official policy, American switched to offer 24 hour refunds when purchasing travel a week or more in advance and eliminated 24 hour holds, but continued offering holds as an option on the website, indicating this would go away at some point. Am I American?

In general.

Telephone booking fees have been eliminated by American. For Executive Platinum members, the waiving of these was already done. American began waiving booking fees for awards you couldn't book online a year ago. The same...

In general.