One of the biggest advantages of booking a flight with points instead of cash is that award tickets often have more flexible cancellation policies. While canceling a paid ticket may only get you a flight credit, canceling an award ticket with American Airlines usually means your miles go right back into your account. Even better, American no longer charges redeposit fees, so in most cases you’ll get your miles and taxes refunded without paying a penalty.
American Airlines allows you to cancel an award ticket up until departure time. If you cancel online through AA.com or the mobile app, your AAdvantage miles will typically be reinstated automatically. This is a big improvement from just a few years ago, when you often had to call customer service to get your miles back.
Automatic Re-depositing of Award Miles
According to American Airlines’ policy, if you cancel your award ticket online through aa.com or the mobile app before departure, your AAdvantage® miles will be reinstated automatically in many cases. Taxes and fees paid on the booking are also refunded back to your original form of payment.
You can cancel your award ticket anytime on aa.com. We will reinstate your AAdvantage® miles up to 1 year after the ticket issue date as long as you cancel your ticket before the first flight departs. If you cancel your trip on aa.com, your miles will be reinstated automatically in many cases.
This automation is a big step forward from how things used to work, when calling an agent was often the only way to get your miles back after a cancellation. Today, for straightforward bookings on American-operated flights, the miles usually show back up in your account almost immediately.
On one trip, American Airlines kept delaying my flight home from Las Vegas. After several schedule changes, I eventually gave up and booked a replacement flight on Spirit. While waiting in the Las Vegas Centurion Lounge, I canceled my first-class award ticket through the AA app and received an email confirming the cancellation.
Your trip was booked with AAdvantage® miles. We’ll reinstate those miles automatically.
However, the miles didn’t return to my account right away. While the taxes I paid for the ticket were refunded quickly to my credit card, the miles sat in limbo. That meant I had to call American Airlines to get the award redeposit pushed through.
When the Miles Don’t Come Back Automatically
Even though American promises automatic mileage reinstatement, that isn’t always what happens in practice. In my case, the miles never showed up after I canceled online, so I had to call the AAdvantage desk.
When I called the reservations line, the recording warned me that the hold time was nearly two hours. I chose the option to receive a callback instead of waiting on hold. The first call attempt dropped before I reached a representative, but American did try me again a few minutes later. This time, I spoke with an agent who was able to confirm that my ticket was canceled and manually processed the redeposit. The miles didn’t appear instantly, but a couple of days later, they were finally back in my account.
The lesson: while most straightforward cancellations on AA’s website or app now refund miles right away, sometimes the process still requires manual intervention — and a little patience.
When You May Still Need to Call
For most simple itineraries on American Airlines, canceling online means your miles go back automatically. But there are still situations where the process doesn’t always work on its own. In these cases, you may need to call AAdvantage Reservations to have the redeposit handled manually:
- Partner airline bookings — If your itinerary includes flights on partner airlines, miles often won’t redeposit automatically when canceled online.
- Partially used tickets — If you’ve flown one leg of a round-trip award and need to cancel the return, an agent usually has to process the mileage credit.
- Schedule changes or irregular operations — If the flight was altered or canceled by the airline, the system may not automatically reinstate your miles.
- System hiccups — Even on straightforward AA-only bookings, the miles sometimes just don’t show back up right away. When that happens, a quick call usually fixes it.
In other words, the automatic feature works most of the time, but it’s worth knowing when you might still have to pick up the phone.
Final Thought
American Airlines has made canceling award tickets much easier by removing redeposit fees and introducing automatic mileage reinstatement. For most itineraries, your miles come back right away when you cancel online. But as we’ve seen, there are still situations — like partner awards or partially used tickets — where the process doesn’t run smoothly and may require a call.
No matter what, it’s always your responsibility to make sure the miles actually return to your account. Since American doesn’t allow third-party services like AwardWallet to track your AAdvantage balance, the only way to confirm is by logging into your account directly on aa.com or through the app. Keep all of your reservation and cancellation emails until the miles are safely back in your account, just in case you need proof when speaking with an agent.
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