Why American Airlines Pulled The Plug On Extended Reservation Holds
American Airlines has eliminated the option to pay for an extended hold. People simply did not use it.
You can usually hold a reservation – preserving its price, though technically not guaranteed until ticketing – for 24 hours. But customers could pay a fee to extend this to 3, 5, or 7 days. Those paid extended hold options are no longer being sold.
While free 24 hour holds are popular (and 5 day holds on awards), people did not want to pay extra to hold a reservation for more than 24 hours, in order to avoid paying extra when they were ready to ticket.
American began selling extended holds in 2015. It was an early revenue initiative of US Airways management after taking over.
This isn’t really a loss, but it’s fascinating insight into the business of retailing airfare, where the American Airlines website could do $60 million a day in sales even before the pandemic and the inflation that followed.