American Finally Lets Most Members Cancel Awards, Redeposit Miles Online - Only Through May 31 - View from the Wing

You can cancel an American Airlines award ticket online - there's a cancel link in your account's itineraries. Cancelling, through, doesn't put miles back into your account. To get miles redeposited you've had to call American - until now, under certain limited conditions, as Zach Griff flags.

For tickets booked by May 31, 2020 for travel through September 30, 2020, some award tickets can be cancelled and miles reinstated automatically 'within 48 hours' (so you may need to wait to book another award). To use this,

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• The booking must be for one passenger only, who used miles from their own account for the trip.
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• The trip must be for American Airlines travel only, no partners.
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• It had to have been booked through American's U.S. website or a U.S. call center and not changed at all since it was first issued.
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• The trip cannot have started (e.g. you've flown the outbound but not the return)

Even then, if you paid for seat assignments or prepaid checked bags you'll have to call to request a refund of those fees.

The reason for the restriction on when the ticket had to be booked by and when travel occurs is because those are the dates where mileage ticket redeposits have their fees waived due to coronavirus.

After June 1 online mileage redeposit will only be available to Executive Platinum (and Concierge Key) members, since no redeposit fee applies for these members and the website apparently hasn't been set up to collect on American's new fee structure for changes.

And even then only Executive Platinums who are traveling alone on the reservation, used their own miles to purchase the tickets, and are flying American and not any of its partners can do this. Moreover if the ticket was purchased through one of American's international call centers, or non-U.S. websites then the member isn't eligible. Or if any changes have been made to the ticket since it was issued or if travel has started then redeposits cannot be done online.

So it seems like a long way away from this being ready for prime time, but as they say nearly all progress is at the margin.