How Hard Was It To Cancel Our American Airlines Flight To Japan?

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In January, I booked flights to Japan for November 2020. I found business class flights to Tokyo from Orlando for 60,000 American AAdvantage miles and $5.60. I’d not canceled the flight yet, even though we’ve long given up on going. Travel to Japan from the United States isn’t going to get back to normal in the next 60+ days.

I’d hesitated to cancel our flight because until recently you had to call American Airlines to redeposit miles into your account. Several commenters let me know that the wait times to call American Airlines were relatively short and the process was easy. American also updated its website so you can get miles redeposited automatically when canceling online.

I logged into my account and clicked on the View/Change button.

After pulling up the flight info, I clicked on the Cancel Flight button listed above the itinerary. It still hurt to cancel these flights.

I just had to confirm that I wanted to cancel for all passengers. I clicked on cancel trip.

The website said that if your trip was eligible, miles would be automatically reinstated within 48 hours. Here were the rules about which reservations are eligible.

Automatic mileage reinstatement

If your trip is eligible, your miles will be automatically reinstated within 48 hours of canceling your trip online. For all other trips, contact Reservations to have your miles reinstated.

Eligible customers / trips must meet these requirements:

• Travel is on American Airlines flights only.
• The ticket was purchased directly with American in the U.S. or via our U.S. website.
• Travel for any portion of the trip has not begun.
• No changes have been made to the trip since the ticket was issued.

Refunds for the purchase of ancillary products such as seats, pre-paid bags or priority boarding will need to be requested separately.

That was it. Our trip was canceled.

I received an email within minutes saying that the $5.60 taxes were being refunded to the card I used to make the reservation. I also logged out of the American website and logged back in 10 minutes later. While it says it can take up to 48 hours to get your miles back, the 120,000 AAdvantage miles are already in my account.

Once again, I have way too many American AAdvantage miles. Hopefully, it won’t be too long until we’ll be able to make plans to put them to good use.

#stayhealthy #staysafe #washyourhands #wearamask

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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary