We’ll have to mark this as “developing” for now, but this potentially has major implications for award travel on American, especially if booking through a partner program, like Alaska Atmos Rewards or British Airways Club.

American radically changes close-in award availability

Is American trying to block partner award availability access?

Bottom line

American radically changes close-in award availability

Historically, American has been by far the best of the “big three” US carriers when it comes to making award seats on its own flights available, especially on domestic and short haul international flights. American actually releases a good amount of saver award seats across cabins, and it’s one of the things that makes AAdvantage better than the competition .

However, it appears that American may have just made a major change to how it releases award space, as flagged by DansDeals .…