Remember To Audit Your American Airlines Award Cancellation Refunds & Mileage Redeposits

American Airlines AAdvantage miles come very handy for partner awards, as there is no fee to cancel, minimal surcharges (don’t redeem on BA), and you can pretty much do everything online.

You should, however, never count on the award cancellation also refunding the miles or the taxes and fees, as I have found out. I would give it a fifty-fifth chance, whether I need to contact AA.

You can access AA here.

I tend to use awards to connect paid itineraries, and I had a rather busy flying schedule from mid-February to the end of March to earn the last Tier Points for lifetime BA Gold.

I had quite a few AAdvantage awards booked, and ended up canceling some when better options surfaced (direct CX HKG-CTS in whY) and when plans changed (I ended up in Dubai from Cairo instead of Bangkok).

I had to go through the award reservations I had made, which I had used, and what had been correctly refunded.

The AA’s web page is very unclear about whether your miles and fees are refunded when you cancel an award, and you don’t know this until you have processed it.

The email like the one above usually means that you need to call AA to have the miles redeposited.

You should have the PNR and e-ticket number available. The AA agent usually asks for the PNR first, but if this is a cancelled partner award, the PNR is probably long gone, and they need the e-ticket number.

I called American and first got a domestic agent, who transferred me to an agent who could handle international itineraries.

I got an agent in Arizona who was very cheerful, even at about midnight local time.

He went through all the itineraries, and one of them was marked as used. It’s possible that I flew it, but I need to double-check.

The miles for the three itineraries were refunded, and the call took 35 minutes.

Conclusion

So, 85,000 AAdvantage miles were refunded to my account, but it makes you wonder.

How many AAdvantage members don’t realize that their cancelled itineraries have not been correctly refunded, and you need to call in?

I would say that I need to call in, perhaps for every other award ticket that I have cancelled, and have the miles redeposited and the taxes and fees refunded.

I wish that AA would be clearer when the miles have been refunded in their online communication and emails.

What have been your experiences with cancelling AAdvantage rewards? Have the miles automatically redeposited or not?

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