One of the things I love most about airline loyalty programs is that they give you flexibility. If you find yourself in a jam and need to get somewhere, but cash prices are too high, you can generally find cheaper options by using miles. Likewise, miles are a great way to speculatively book flights.
Whenever I start planing a trip I first look for flights and book with miles when sAAver space is available. After booking my “backup” mileage flights, I begin looking at cash prices. I try to then decide if it makes sense to pay for my flights with cash. I do this because prices tend to creep up as you get closer to my travel dates and I hate paying a ton of money for flights that I wait too long to book with cash. Essentially, booking flights with miles gives me the flexibility of booking a refundable ticket without having to pay a premium.
Canceling An AAdvantage Award Flight
Now, considering I use the above strategy often, I end up canceling quite a few of the award flights I book. Typically this would be an issue as American actually charges most customers for award flight cancelations. For most customers there is a $150 “reinstatement” fee for customers who cancel an award ticket and want the miles back. However, American Airlines waives this fee for Executive Platinum customers. Perhaps this is one of the more lucrative benefits often overlooked for those considering qualifying for elite status.
Canceling an award flight as an American Airlines Executive Platinum customer is easy. You can simply go online and hit the cancel button and American cancels the trip within a few moments. However, I don’t recommend doing this. Instead, I recommend calling American’s Executive Platinum desk and canceling the itinerary by phone. I always call to cancel an award flight because the phone agent’s are more diligent in redepositing award miles. Occasionally when you cancel online the system does not automatically redeposit your miles.
Request A Redeposit Of AAdvantage Award Miles
A few days ago I canceled an award flight over the phone. When I canceled my trip the phone agent mentioned that my miles should appear in my account shortly. As I’ve canceled several award trip this year I had no reason not to believe her. However, I made sure to monitor my AAdvantage milage balance just to make sure.
A day passed and my miles didn’t show up. Two days later and I began to worry. Finally, after nearly a week had passed I decided it was time to reach out to American to get my miles back. At first I was going to call the AAdvantage Executive Platinum desk, but then I decided to see if this could be done over Twitter.
A few moments after Tweeting @AmericanAir, the airline responded and instructed me to Direct Message (DM) them my booking code. I then went back into my email to find the confirmation number. From there I sent them a direct message from the Twitter Conversation with my Reference Number.
A short while after messaging American Airlines their twitter team confirmed that the miles were missing and redeposited them into my account. Literally 1 minute after receiving the above message the miles showed up in my account.
Final Thoughts
This situation taught me two very important things. The first is to always monitor your milage account to make sure that you have the miles you deserve. I check my mileage balance after each trip I take to make sure that flights aren’t missing. Likewise, I check my balance after situations like this to make sure the miles actually are returned to my account.
This particular situation taught me of yet another thing American Airlines can handle via Twitter. American’s Twitter team is top notch at assisting in many situations and this is yet another situation that I’ve discovered they can handle. I personally prefer communicating with American over Twitter because of how passive it is. I don’t need to set aside time to have a call with the Airline. Instead, I can fire off a Tweet and wait for a response. By using Twitter I can communicate with the airline when it’s convenient for me and that’s something I value.
