American Airlines has reduced the hold time on AAdvantage award tickets from five days to 24 hours, a move that is disappointing and yet very reasonable.

American Airlines Reduces AAdvantage Award Ticket Hold Time By 80%

Just yesterday, I put an AAdvantage award on hold for a client for five days…for years, AA has had the most generous award hold policy whereby:

• award bookings could be held for up to five days if you held a reservation 14 or more days before departure
• award bookings could be held for up to one day if you held a reservation within 14 days of departure

Those days were not defined as 24 hour periods, such that if you put on hold a ticket on Wednesday morning for travel within 14 days, you generally had until Thursday night at 11:59 pm local time to book it, giving you even more than 24 hours.

But One Mile A Time notes a policy change in effect today at American Airlines that reduces all award holds to 24 hours. This aligns award reservations with revenue reservations, which also offer 24 hours (with some exceptions).

It also makes sense. If you’re holding space, that means others cannot book it. Perhaps AA saw that too many people were making speculative bookings, which meant losing revenue customers.

I’m Thankful That Award Holds Are Still A Thing, Especially If You Need To Buy Miles

Of course, I’m not happy about this change in the sense that the five-day hold was generous and allowed for planning of hotels and other ground activities without having to confirm one at the risk of the other.

That will still be possible, but the time horizon will be compacted.

But AA was the only US carrier with such a generous hold policy and even with the hold time reduced by 80% for trips booked more than two weeks in advance, it’s still an option…and that’s a big deal. I’m also thankful that AA makes it so easy to hold awards…just go through the booking process, choose hold, click confirm, and you’re done…no credit card info needed and most importantly, you don’t need sufficient miles in the account in order to hold the award.

Finally, I note that AA also does not charge a reinstatement or cancellation fee for award tickets, so I recommend avoiding holds altogether and just ticketing reservations on the spot if you have the miles available. On rare occasions over the years, I have seen partner space drop off before the hold limit or suddenly “unconfirm,” and so the “bird in the hand…” concept applies here.

CONCLUSION

Advance planners who book more than 14 days in advance will no longer be able to hold American Airlines AAdvantage awards for five days: that hold time has been reduced to 24 hours to align award tickets with revenue tickets. While I do not celebrate this news, I do celebrate that at least AA still allows free award holds, which is more than United Airlines, Alaska Airlines, and Delta Air Lines do.

Will this change to award holds on AA adversely impact you?