‘Odd’ I thought, why do I have a new confirmation for my flights in April? when I briefly checked my emails.

‘I’ll get to it later. It’s not as if AA is changing flights that close’.

Well it is!

As it turns out AA appear to have loaded schedule changes for April, in the week before and after Easter, as I found out when I compared my diary to the mystery email.

My carefully crafted LHR-BOS-LAX-LAS turned in to a LHR-LAX-LAS, costing me 140 Tier Points. This isn’t fatal this year, but what annoys me is that AA just send an email rather than phoning. Clearly the system looking at the change is pretty narrowly focused on get the problem segments rebooked. For example, in my case, it left a 6 hour connection time for the flight on to Las Vegas when plenty of earlier flights had availability.

You can use schedule changes to your advantage, if you find a willing operator. Often they will stick you on routings that earn more miles (Avios or Tier Points), if you ask nicely, or think of a good excuse. Otherwise, the system usually picks the AA flight nearest to where you were going. In my example, my BA A380 has become an AA 772, with the risk of sloping seats if they substitute the plane on the day.

Check your flights, is my advice, if you are travelling around this time, just in case your email hasn’t come yet.