There’s a saying that there’s an inversely proportional relationship between how good an airline is in the air, and how good they are on the ground. These claims mainly come from the U.S., since their airlines mainly have really good customer service on the ground, but aren’t renowned for how good they are in the air. Well, I’d like to talk about the American Airlines AAdvantage call center, as they’re so easy to work with, and ticketing with them is so straightforward.
AAdvantage is one of my favourite mileage programmes, and one of my favourite elements is that you can book up to four segments on a one-way award. This means that you can position between segments that have award space, as well as maximise the number of cabin products that you can fly. The catch is that the website will only show itineraries of up to three segments, so you’ll have to call if you want to book a four-segment itinerary.
Well, I’m glad to say that it’s super easy to work with the American Airlines AAdvantage call centre, at least here in the UK. I’ve booked using the airline’s call centre multiple times, and have never been super frustrated. In this post I’ll detail some of the experiences I’ve had, as well as some tips on how you can make a call centre experience smooth.
My experience using AAdvantage’s UK call centre
I’ve got a future award held from Paris to Singapore via Colombo and Kuala Lumpur, which cost 75,000 miles in business class plus £152 in taxes. Most of this is an ex-France departure tax, which is just a hair lower than what you’d expect when departing from the UK, though still sizeable.
I went to Paris a couple of times last year, and today I learned that departure taxes out of Madrid were way cheaper. I found a business class award seat the same morning from Madrid to Paris, which would drive the taxes and fees on the award ticket down to £46 (that’s £106 in savings) – as well as give me some time in Madrid, which I hadn’t visited since 2021. So the goal was to tack on the Madrid to Paris segment at the beginning of the itinerary, where I would be charged cheaper taxes and fees, as well as been able to spend some time in Madrid.
I wouldn’t pay to be in intra-European business class, but if I’m being paid £106 to take intra-European business class, I might as well (especially when I need to position anyway)
So I dialled up American Airlines’ UK number, and after confirming that I was making changes to a booking, I was brought through to an agent. Let me first point out that being pointed to a live agent took a total of five minutes on a Saturday at 7 PM. Cathay Pacific sometimes takes 36 hours just to connect you to an agent on live chat at all, and calling their Asia Miles call center can take a similarly long time.
I gave my six-digit PNR, and was asked for my full name as well as my date of birth. Afterwards, I explained that I’d made a three-segment booking, and wanted to tack on a fourth segment at the beginning of the booking. She asked for the flight number and date, put me on hold for 5-10 minutes, and afterwards let me know that my booking was in the queue to be ticketed. I saw an “on request” booking pending in my AAdvantage account, which confirmed that this had been done.
No painfully long verification process, no discrepancy in award space seen by the agent, and no confusion about what I was trying to do. The agent was knowledgeable about routing rules, clearly well-trained in how the system worked (she warned me that she might have to first cancel my booking and rebook, though we learned together that this wasn’t needed), and led me clearly and confidently through the process.
An easy and productive call with the AAdvantage call centre
In terms of other experiences I’ve had with AAdvantage’s call centre, I’ve booked quite a few multi-segment itineraries (mainly in Qatar Airways and Etihad business class). Usually tickets booked directly through aa.com take much less time to ticket compared to tickets arranged over the phone (which can take up to 48 hours to ticket), though it’s often a short waiting game, and not something to be too concerned about. In either case, booking with AAdvantage is usually a very easy process.
Tips for working well with airline call centres such as AAdvantage
When a call centre is easy to work with, it’s still important to be clear about what you want, as well as being able to easily give all the information that the call centre agent requires to work with your booking. For example:
- Make sure you get on the call knowing which flights you would like to book – you should have verified that there is award space available in your cabin class of choice
- Make sure that you have your six-digit PNR – if you’ve booked a partner award on AAdvantage, remember that American Airlines issues their own PNR and a partner airline PNR, and agents can only work with the American Airlines PNR
- Use the phonetic alphabet – all American Airlines agents use the NATO one so that would work best, though it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things – using some sort of phonetic alphabet system just prevents mix-ups between N and M, B and P, etc.
- Be really clear about the changes you want to make to your booking: if you’re making a booking from scratch, mention how many segments you’d like the booking to be (as well as the origin and final destination), then mention that you’ll spell the booking out segment by segment giving flight numbers wherever possible
- Always be friendly and courteous – while it is their job, they are still serving you
If you’re planning on booking a four-segment itinerary, I would recommend either booking the first three segments or the last three segments online, then asking the call centre agent to add the last segment to your itinerary. This will result in the least back-and-forth, and make for a more effective call.
Being clear in a call centre call will help reduce your frustration and the overall productivity of the call – less steps towards booking your flight (such as Etihad Airways business class!)
Conclusion
In an area where ground customer service can often be extremely slow and/or questionable, American Airlines’ call centre impresses me quite consistently (which I recognise is not exactly their customer service reputation in an airport or in the air). I thought I’d write a post just to leave some good words about my experience, as well as give some general tips on how to make a call centre call productive.
How do you make sure an airline call centre call is effective?
