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Adding salt to the award space wound – AA making married segments much more difficult to split.

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A married segment is a tricky technique that airlines employ whereby they only allow award availability on a route if you fly multiple segments together, but if you break those segments apart, the availability disappears.  The segments are effectively “married.” I’ve run into this before, but it’s getting downright ridiculous with American. I was able to visit some family over the 4th of July and needed to get back to Los Angeles. No saaver award avail was showing on the direct flight from IND to LAX. While some saver options were populating on United with a connection, I wanted to take advantage of AA’s reduced mileage awards, of which IND was listed as a participating city. Here’s the kicker:

If I searched various routing options I started to see that the IND-LAX flight was available, but only if I continued on to Phoenix. Absolutely ridiculous, but these are the techniques being employed these days. AA was engaging in “married segment” availability.

It’s bad enough that AA makes so little of their space available, but married segments is salt in the wound. Just another reason why I’ve aligned with AS. In the past, it has been fairly easy to drop the segment, but now – not so much.  Here’s my experience and some advice if you end up in the same situation.

I wanted to fly IND-LAX. This is what I was seeing.

a white rectangular object with a purple border

However, if I searched IND-PHX, I saw this. Space available on the flight I wanted.

This means that because I searched for “creative” flight routes I could potentially save over 20k AA miles.

Here’s what I did.

  1. I placed the award flight on hold.
    • If you are outside of 24 hours you can do this, but if you’re within 24 hours it’s impossible
  2. I phoned in to ask for the removal of the LAX-PHX leg.
    • The first rep denied it saying that it was impossible to do because IND-LAX showed no avail
      • While on the phone I had her add my pet fee, and apply my reduced mileage award
    • I hung up and called back
  3. I phoned back and was given the exact same information
    • I was also told that I couldn’t apply the Reduced Mileage Award that was already on there because I was departing IND not going to it.
      • Ridiculous as I’ve done this many times before
    • I canceled the hold
  4. I rebooked the ticket immediately – this time with an overnight connection
    • I phone back in to a different rep.
      • First I added the Reduced Mileage Award, no problem
      • I added my pet
      • I requested to have the connection the following day removed.
        • Uh oh…she couldn’t do it either; however, she instructed me to just not show up.

So there you have it folks – an AA rep instructed me to skip a segment on what is essentially a “hidden city” award ticket/ married segment – this violates the carrier conditions, btw. But the rep said, not me.

Also…the reduced mileage award went through fine: My Aviator Red saved me 4625 miles. ( 3750 with reduced mileage, 875 with 10% back)

a screenshot of a computer screen

At this point, I wasn’t going to push further. I could have called a foreign desk like Australia, etc, but my connection was overnight – meaning I can pick up my checked bag ( my pet counts as a carry on, so I’m limited to just my backpack) when I land in LA. In the past, it’s been well documented that if you do enough HUCAs you can have this married segment removed. Now…I’m not so sure. I tried 3 times and was sent to a help desk once – hang up if this happens – it’s a waste of time, but I thought I’d see what they said. It was my last day visiting my family and I wasn’t going to waste it on the phone with AA for anecdotal purposes.

The issue for many will be what happens when the married segment is in front of leg you want, or you’re checking a bag w/o an overnight connection.

My recommendation would be to phone in to the US once, if denied, call a foreign help line – that link has a list of them all. I know Australia is great for booking Etihad tickets, that for some reason US reps can’t book/won’t book, so I’d start there first.



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The most important thing you can do is be nice, act uninformed, and don’t push, otherwise a note could be made on your hold.

I was fortunate that space was available on an overnight connection, but that won’t always be the case, and I’d need to keep the hold, and keep it free of negative notes while trying to figure out an alternative.

Have you divorced married segments recently? Any further tips I should add?

 

 

 

 

Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.

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10 Comments

  • […] Perhaps a problem would arise when going to ticket, but I’ve noticed an increasing trend with AA marrying segments using their own miles, so it wouldn’t surprise me at all if they’ve taken a step […]

  • […] been a bad week for me and AA. First I run into crappy married segment availability, and the issues with divorcing them to isolate the segment I wanted, and now award availability is […]

  • […] and then dropping segments over the phone. Some folks are having difficulty getting that done now, but one agent just suggests throwaway ticketing. Don’t check bags including gate checking (or force an overnight connection so your bags […]

  • DaninMCI July 8, 2018

    I noticed weird issues with this last October and it’s nothing new but seems to have gotten much worse in the last year. https://cliqbait.com/2017/10/01/american-airlines-playing-games-with-award-availability-on-non-stop-flights/

  • KL July 8, 2018

    I recently tried to get a SYD-LAX segment dropped to get just LAX-ATL. I called the US 3 times, Singapore, New Zealand, and Australia and no agent would do it for me. Although my hunch is that all those countries route their calls to the same call center.

  • Sonya July 8, 2018

    From my experience, you can change a ticket after it’s been issued to merge with a new route or have segments removed. But it has to be issued first, otherwise, the agent will say that route doesn’t exist via award tickets. Of course there will likely be fees for most people if they wait for ticketing…. As an Exec Plat, it’s free for me though….

    • Miles July 9, 2018

      Sonya – Great point – I was thinking pre-ticketing, but I’ll add for those who are EP+ or willing to eat a change fee.

  • Gene July 8, 2018

    I see no issue with the throwaway. What are they going to do?

  • Frank July 8, 2018

    This is really good info, thanks for sharing. It’s ridiculous that they wont remove it, I guess that’s 1 less seat they will make money on.

  • gus July 8, 2018

    I have also seen a lot of the opposite, on United: individual flights show to have availability, and the agents refuse to combine them without charging for two award tickets. UA agents are less and less likely to make an exception and build the ticket for you, ever since they changed systems last year.
    All this is of course ridiculous– when it comes to award flights, flights should be either available and unavailable and you should be able to construct whatever itinerary you want within the award ticketing rules.

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