Due to various sales ex-EU in the past, I have some experience dealing the American Airlines reservation systems for flights from the European Union. American Airlines uses Amadeus for certain countries in the EU (in this case Ireland) instead of their usual SABRE.
I would often book directly through American because either I could only find the best fare on American vs. OTAs, or I wanted to use the hold feature. Google Flights would direct me to the americanairlines.eu.amadeus.com link. And when I tried to search for the same flight on aa.com, I was quoted a slightly higher price due to currency conversion to USD. But when I put a reservation on hold through the americanairlines.eu.amadeus.com website, and later tried to find it on the AA.com site to pay for it, I would get this message “Please call to book your trip”
What? But my trip was all AA metal or codeshares, and I didn’t want to pay a phone booking fee.
Why can’t I pay for this trip online?
I just discovered a trick to let you access the reservation and actually pay for it online without any phone booking fees. I was trying to dig around the americanairlines.eu.amadeus.com homepage, but all it did was redirect me to AA.com.
Instead I found that if you access one of American Airlines’ foreign sites that uses Amadeus, such as Ireland, you can actually access the held booking again to pay.
Select an appropriate country. Ireland seems to work
After you’ve reached the foreign site, just put in your booking reference number in Find Your Reservation
And even though it says it will direct you to the US aa.com site, you actually end up at americanairlines.eu.amadeus.com, and are able to pay for the trip! Now you don’t have to be hit with a phone booking fee for reservations you’ve placed on hold on using American Airlines’ Amadeus reservation system!
Pay for that held ticket!