American AirlinesUse AA.com to Hold Tickets
One of my favorite features of American Airlines’ website (AA.com) is that it allows you to hold tickets for 24 hours, free of charge and without requiring you to plop down a credit card. I believe it began shortly after the 2011 Department of Transportation rule stating that all U.S. and foreign carriers have to allow consumers the ability “to hold a reservation at the quoted fare for 24 hours without payment or allow a reservation to be cancelled within 24 hours without penalty.”

However, the rule only applies to reservations made seven days or more prior to the flight’s scheduled departure time, so if you’re flying last-minute, you’re out of luck. And as far as I know, American Airlines is the only airline that allows consumers to hold a reservation without a credit card for 24 hours, making it much easier to cancel.

 

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4 Comments On "Travel Tip of the Day: Use AA.com to Hold Tickets"
  1. Linda De|

    Ii have used this function many time whilst manipulating varies hotel reservations and the plane flights. Handy to know you have a reservation on hold and then fine tune the rooms. Kudos to AA… but I fear that now that you/I have made it known that it is helpful it could get overloaded. Note to AA, please don’t change what it working and your loyal fans like!!!!

  2. dcm|

    You are probably aware that United (and I believe the same is for Delta) allows you to cancel a booking within 24 giving you a full refund. If you book with American and pay for your flight, they won’t give you a refund if you cancel within 24 hrs, because their reasoning is that they give you the option to hold your reservation for 24 hrs without charging you. So, just remember that with United and Delta, you can cancel with a full refund, if you do it within 24 hrs of booking. With American, if you are not totally sure of your booking, you need to take advantage of the hold option, because when you do give them your credit card to pay for your ticket there is no option to refund it.

  3. marian|

    i use the aa.com reservations feature all the time, if i find a flight i like i can hold it while checking out other flights in the meantime.

  4. Cesar|

    Hey there, FYI, Qatar Airways lets you hold reservations for 48 hours, they have great connections and are part of One World now.

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