Last year I was able to get bumped from two American Airlines flights. I received an AA certificate for each bump — the only draw back is that they have to be redeemed at a ticket office, airport ticketing counter, or over the phone (and then mailed in). Since I had procrastinated so long, and the certificates were expiring, I didn’t want to wait for the mail-in option and instead wanted to be sure they were applied immediately. Luckily, in New York City, there is a city ticket office. It’s located on 360 Lexington Ave, NY, NY (between 40th and 41st street).
The office is setup similar to the check-in counters at the airport.
The office is shared with a “It’s Easy” service center where you can obtain passport photos.
When I walked in, there was one agent working and she quickly took care of the two customers in front of me. She was then able to process my held reservation and apply the certificates and issue the tickets. Some notes to remember about the certificates:
- If I didn’t use the full amount of these particular certificates, the agent would have re-issued me a new cert with the balance. The one year validity period would have restarted at that time.
- Vouchers are not transferable but you can present the voucher and purchase a ticket for someone else.
- I was buying two tickets, since my certs covered the whole cost of the first ticket, the total price of the first ticket was lowered since some of the taxes were removed. A nice added bonus! (except vouchers marked OU)
Overall a very easy and quick process. I was glad I didn’t have to take an extra trip to the airport, the location made the whole process simpler.
