American Airlines Ticket Pending? Expect Delays In Confirming, They Say
If you’ve got an American Airlines ticket pending, expect delays in getting it confirmed. That’s what AA told me in my recent ordeal. Unfortunately, this isn’t the only issue with American Airlines right now. Here’s what I learned, in case anyone else is in this “ticket pending, takes forever” situation with AA right now.
The Data
More than 3 weeks ago, I changed the dates on our flights. We received an email that our flights were changed, and the new options didn’t work for us. I called in, told them the flights I wanted, and the agent sent me the itinerary.
This is for a cash flight in business class on AA metal, so nothing complicated involved. It’s also the return leg from our previous flights, so it’s not a new ticket.
After 48 hours, I thought it strange that the tickets were still pending. I contacted AA’s Twitter team to ask. They told me things were fine, my tickets would be issued soon.
After a week, our American Airlines ticket still showed pending status. I asked again, and they told me things were fine. It was in their list of tickets to work on. I’ve flown a lot and never seen a ticket take this long to issue, but ok!
After 2 weeks, same message from me and same reply from them.
In week 2, I also sent an email to their customer service asking for my ticket to be issued. They sent me this VERY helpful (note the sarcasm) set of instructions on how to print my itinerary.
Week 3, I called and messaged them on Twitter. I told them “keep waiting” is no longer sufficient, because “we are now 5 days from our flight”. They told me that they cannot create a case, re-submit, or escalate my concern if we are not within 72 hours of our flight.
Again to make sure it’s clear
American Airlines says it has a long queue of tickets to issue. They won’t even look at yours or take complaints/escalate your concern if it’s still more than 72 hours until your flight.
True To Their Word – Got Tickets Confirmed
American Airlines finally confirmed our tickets. This was 4 days before our flights & more than 3 weeks after requesting the date change. We had our American Airlines ticket pending for over 3 weeks, they kept telling us to wait, and they finally got to us when it was almost time to fly.
Final Thoughts
If you have tickets pending with American Airlines, expect it to drag out. This may only be related to changes and hopefully isn’t snagging everyone with new tickets, as well. I wanted to share this in case anyone else is wondering what’s going on with AA and these delays. They won’t do anything but tell you “it’s fine” and tell you to wait until you get close to flying. Then, they’ll issue your tickets. If you don’t have your tickets 72 hours before the flight, at that point they’ll create a case and escalate it to someone. It shouldn’t be this complicated for an airline to issue tickets on its own flights, but it is. Just sit back and wait–it’s all you can do with AA right now.
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It’s so great finding your post! I am having the same issue, but thankfully my flight isn’t for a couple of months. So I will keep tabs on the status and call AA again if the ticket is still “pending”. The reason I was concerned is because I actually booked two flights directly with AA during the same phone call, but only one was immediately confirmed whilst the other is still pending. I assume that part of the problem is that I was using travel credit along with paying the residual balance for the total cost. Who knows? These days you really just have to “go with the flow”, I guess. Thanks again for your post, and I’m glad your flight plans finally went well.
Very helpful article. Same situation for me. AA changed my original flight and new times didn’t work for us. I called and updated the outbound leg. Ticket has now been pending for 45 days!! Called yesterday, and they guaranteed that the ticket would be issued in 10 to 15 minutes. Still pending 24 hours later. Guess I’ll wait until 72 hours before flight. Thank you!
It’s quite a mess, but that seems like all you can do right now.
Suspect this was due to the change of an existing flight that likely required some manual processing (no idea why it should, as someone with 40 years in IT, but speculating). I’ve flown over 3 million miles on AA and fly them primarily (even though retired) since I live in an AA hub. I have NEVER seen a new ticket issued (cash or miles) that took over a couple of hours to confirm and I have 5 flights coming up in the next few months so flying them a lot right now
I have been waiting over 48 hours for a reissue and have never waited more than a few hours in the past. It stinks because I can’t select my seats
Use ExpertFlyer to see what seats are open (this feature of “create seat alert” even works on the free version) and then message them on twitter to tell them the seats you want. They can at least do that while you’re waiting.
I’ll do that, not a bad idea. Thank you!
Since you were on a revenue ticket on AA stock that was only reissued due to a change you were in a super sweet spot. In a similar situation with an international partner award ticket I’d be chewing my nails off. Glad it worked out though.