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MMMondayMemo: Change American Award Tickets for Free
Every Monday, MonkeyMiles sends out a Memo with a tip on how you can save time, money, and points. Many of you may already know the tips, but more and more new monkeys are flocking to this hobby every single day and knowledge is power. This Monday we are looking at the flexibility associated with an award ticket vs a revenue ticket.
Award tickets are far more flexible than Revenue tickets. Here’s some info
- As long as the Origin and Destination cities stay the same you can change the ticket fee free.
- This assumes your ticket has been booked after March 22, 2016
- If it is a pre-deval ticket then there are exceptions. Keep reading.
- This means you can change your routing, airlines, layovers, etc.
- If you have a ticket booked solely on AA metal and want to change this combination to say American, Air Berlin, and BA – you can, Fee free. You’ll just pay any difference in fees + taxes
- This assumes your ticket has been booked after March 22, 2016
- If you change a pre-devaluation ticket ( any award ticket priced prior to March 22nd, 2016) then the routing has to stay the same.
- I changed a pre-deval ticket earlier this week. Because the new pricing required more miles, I didn’t have to pay a redeposit fee. I’m not sure this is customary or not, but the rep did it for me. YMMV
- I was told that in order to honor the pre-deval pricing the exact routing had to stay the same. I didn’t really push because the ticket swap I was making involved multiple airlines. My original routing was for a direct AA metal flight. If I had found an itinerary with multiple AA flights then I would have pushed harder because I wasn’t mix n matching airlines.
- It’s unclear if the exact routing has to stay the same or it must remain one of following combinations …
- All AA metal
- Combo AA + Partner Metal
- All Partner Metal
- All Same Partner Metal
- I changed a pre-deval ticket earlier this week. Because the new pricing required more miles, I didn’t have to pay a redeposit fee. I’m not sure this is customary or not, but the rep did it for me. YMMV
- If you are Executive Platinum you can deposit an award ticket fee free.
So if you can’t make your flight and you need to change it
- Don’t stress
- Don’t just not show up or cancel it.
- This will incur a $150 redeposit fee
- If you don’t know when you when you can fly that routing…push it as far out as possible.
- This will give you ample time to figure out if you may need to fly that routing later in the year
- Maybe you know when you’d want to fly that routing but it’s not available. Use the flexibility of fee free changes to your advantage and push the flight out past when you’d like, therefore allowing you the opportunity to change it to your desired date when the routing becomes available.
Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card
Welcome Offer
Earn 60,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening.
Annual Fee
$95
Points Earned
Transferrable Chase Ultimate Rewards
- 5x on all travel purchased through Chase Travel℠
- 3x on dining, including eligible delivery services for takeout & dining out
- 3x on select streaming services
- 3x on online grocery purchases
- (excluding Target, Walmart and wholesale clubs)
- $50 Annual Chase Travel Hotel Credit via Chase Travel℠
- The begins immediately for new cardmembers and after your account anniversary for existing cardmembers
- 2x on all other travel
- 10% Anniversary Bonus
- Every year you keep the card, your total spend will yield a 10% points bonus. If you spend $10k in a year, you’ll get 1k bonus points
- Chase Sapphire Preferred continues to redeem at 1.25c in the Chase Travel℠ and the slew of other benefits remain in tact including Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver ( primary ), purchase protections, etc.
- Points are transferrable to 14 Ultimate Rewards partners
- Redeem in Chase Travel℠ for 1.25 cents per point
- No foreign transaction fees
- Suite of Travel and Purchase Coverage
- Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver is my favorite
- Get complimentary access to DashPass which unlocks $0 delivery fees and lower service fees for a minimum of one year when you activate by December 31, 2027.
- $95 Annual Fee
We keep an up to date spreadsheet that lists the best ever offers: You can find that spreadsheet here.
Historically 80k is a very, very good offer and hit in both 2022 and 2023. In 2021, we saw the offer hit an all time high of 100k. Who knows if that will ever come back.
Main Cast:
Cards that earn flexible points and should be used on the bulk of your purchases.
Supporting Cast:
Cards that earn fixed points in the currency of the airline/hotel and can not be transferred at attractive rates. These cards yield benefits that make it worth keeping, but not necessarily worth putting a lot of your everyday spend on.
The Chase Sapphire Preferred® is exceptional starter card and offers transferrable Ultimate Rewards, and pairs well with other Chase cards.
If you carry this card alongside Chase’s cashback cards like the Chase Freedom Flex® and Chase Freedom Unlimited® or the business versions: Ink Business Cash® , Ink Business Unlimited® you can combine the points into Preferred account and transfer into hotel and airline partners
Annual fee is quite low at $95 a year + you get a 10% anniversary bonus on points + $50 hotel credit in Chase travel.
The responses below are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved, or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.