Why I hate American Airlines

The BBQ Pit
1

On Friday December 17, I was scheduled to fly out of Reno to Chicago at 11:45 pm. Several hours earlier, someone from American Airlines called me and told me that flight was delayed 1 1/2 hours…scheduled to leave at 1:15 am. So I thought…that was nice of them to call. So I got to the airport at midnight…A good hour before the flight was supposed to leave and guess what. That flight had already left. They found another plane to take. But, did they bother to let me know? No. The lady at the desk told me that I should have arrived at the time the flight was originally supposed to leave. To which I replied, “Then why call people at all?” So for this miserable experience that wasn’t even my fault, I had to come back the next morning at 8am and I got a $10.00 voucher for breakfast at Burger King.
Then on the way back from Toledo, I had a stopover in Chicago again…it was a 1 hour layover. Well, because of delays, that stopover was whittled away to nothing. My daughter and I had to race across Chicago Ohare about a half a mile so we could make our flight to Reno…it was boarding when we got to the gate…just barely made it.
AAARRRGH. Is this experience unique to American Airlines, or have all airlines gotten this way.

–Gail
“Predictable, really I suppose. It was an act of purest optimism to have posed the question in the first place.” --John Cleese

2

Add me to the list.

Here’s my story.

I, my husband & 2 kids (aged 3 & 5) were flying from Lawton to Dallas on American Eagle (AA’s local puddle-jumper “airline”) to catch a flight to Washington DC.

We had a 9:00 departure arriving at 9:45 in DFW with plenty of time to catch a 11:00 departure from a VERY distant gate at DFW.

We checked in at 8:20, safely well in advance of the requested 30 minute allowance, and go to the waiting room which is a good distance away from the check-in counter. By 8:50 we’ve noticed the waiting room is pretty empty, but this is a little commuter hop that may not have much demand. By 9:15 there’s been no boarding announcemnet whatsoever, and moderate activity (loading suitcases) around the plane we presume is ours. By 9:30, we check back at the check-in counter only to find out that:

a) Our flight was cancelled due to mechanical problems (which IMO arose the instant they realized the had only 7 people on a plane that could accomodate 30 or so).
b) That there were no seats left on the 10:00 departure (that we didin’t pick in the 1st place because it would have only left us 15 minutes to get from gate 1 to gate 30-something in DFW for our connection to DC.) c) Why were there no seats available for the 10:00 flight at 9:30? Because they’d been given to people who walked up at 8:55 for the 9:00 flight & were told at the time they checked in that that flight had been cancelled!!!
d) (In answer to my clenched-teeth inquiry) That they had decided against making an announcement about the flight cancellation because they didn’t want to alarm people in the waiting room & cause a stampede (of 3 groups totalling 7 people at the check-in counter.

So we, with our small kids, took a 12:30 flight to get a 5:00 flight to DC that got us in there after 9 PM.

Since we had no future airline travel plans, we got jack-shit in response to letters to AA headquarters, just a lot of excuses about how they (despite selling us the tickets) weren’t REALLY responsible for what happened on an American Eagle flight.

But, my mother-in-law reported seeing the check-in agent working at Sears a short time time later, so maybe there’s some justice.

Sue from El Paso

Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.

3

For a previous job, I had to travel a lot. My company usually put me on TWA, which was decent, but for some destinations they decided to send me on American Airlines.

AA’s hub is in Chicago, which meant that I always had to go through O’Hare first and switch planes. And in all the times I flew through that airport, I never once had my connecting flight leave at the correct time. All but one of them were delayed from 1-3 hours. (The remaining one was not delayed; it actually left early. So early, in fact, that it was off the ground before I ever got to Chicago to get on it.)

I absolutely refuse to fly American anymore, especially through Chicago. In fact, when USAIR Express cancelled my flight home last night and left me stranded in Philadelphia, the agents wanted to put us on the one remaining flight out that evening, which was on American and going through Chicago; rather than deal with that, we decided to stay overnight and take the first flight out in the morning.

(My USAIR Express experience is a horror story all by itself, but I’ll write it as a separate post later on.)

Laugh hard; it’s a long way to the bank.

4

I thought American’s hub was Dallas while United’s was Chicago.

5

Many large airlines have more than one hub.
Example: United has hubs in Chicago, Denver, San Fransisco and a fews other places I’m sure.

6

My argument is not so much with AA, but with the Wright Amendment.

Under Federal law, any airline flying into Dallas, must fly into DFW.

Love Field, which is a lot closer to downtown Dallas is off-limits, although some of the neighboring states are permitted to, IIRC. (Actually, I think as far away as NM or AZ to the west and AB to the east, but I could be wrong.)

This was concocted by one of the most crooked House Speakers of all time, the “Honorable” Jim Wright, possibly in some backroom deal with AA, since they are headquartered in Dallas–don’t know that fer sure, but it looks suspicious.

7

Argh! Airline hell… SO and I experienced this last Christmas, which is the primary reason why we stayed home this Christmas.

Last year, I was flying from Denver to a small town in Michigan. SO was flying from Denver to San Antonio TX, spending Christmas Day with his family, then joining me in Michigan through New Year’s Day. We both had flights leaving Denver at 7 am on Dec. 23. We left his house at 4:15am (it’s a 1 hour drive to the airport.) We arrived at the airport - no parking. We finally park in what was not quite a parking spot, and start to hustle to the airport proper. Usually, there’s shuttles that take you from the outlying parking lots to the airport. Not this morning. By the time we got into the airport, it was after 6am. We take our luggage to the skycaps, who told us our gate numbers. We run to our separate gates. I get there with about 5 minutes to spare, only to find the skycap had given me the WRONG gate number. By the time I get to my REAL gate, the plane has left.

I stand in line for 30 minutes to try to get on another flight. I find out that SO’s flight has been cancelled due to mechanical failure. They try to get me on another flight, but it basically comes down to it being MY fault that I missed my flight, so I’m like 1 billion down on the list to get on another flight. I wander around the airport, and actually find SO. We are NOT happy. Finally, I get on a flight to Chicago, with about a 10% chance of getting on a connection to my hometown. Nevertheless, I wait around for 5 hours in O’hare. At first, I’m #1 on the list to get on the last flight out. By the time the flight leaves, I’m #10 on the list because of some sort of strange rating system they use. I do not get on the flight, PLUS I get to pay for a hotel room in Chicago because, after all, it’s MY fault I missed my original flight.

SO gets to San Antonio OK. On the 27th, he flies to Michigan with few problems.

We are scheduled to leave MI for Denver on the 3rd. There’s a HUGE snowstorm, and O’Hare is closed, so they cancelled our flight. We spend an hour at the airport in Michigan getting our flights all set for the next day. It was quite an ordeal, as the storm had closed the entire midwest. Finally, we get a flight to Denver. We show up the next morning, only to find that they booked ME on the flight, and SO on some totally different flight that arrives in Denver several hours after mine. We are VERY PISSED, as we spent an hour at the airport in person not 12 hours previously, and they told us everything was all set. Luckily, someone doesn’t show up for the flight I’m on, and they get SO on the flight. This time, we’re going through Milwaukee. Another lucky occurance, and we get on a flight to Denver. We vow never ever ever to fly at Christmas again.

8

I usually fly on Southwest. Never had a big problem. In fact, I usually have a gay old time. Like when I went into Houston. They came over the PA and said, “Southwest, now you know why we’re so cheep; we fly you half the way and drive you the rest!” This was said because we had to taxi like a mile to the gate.

Best!
Byz

9

Anyone who has had to travel with any frequency has undoubtedly experienced similar horror stories on American and other carriers. My particular ghastly memories happen to have occurred on Delta. I won’t go into them (previous posters have already discussed similar travails) except to say that in my opinion ALL airlines act in much the same way.

Airlines see you in two ways:

  1. You are revenue and therefore they don’t want to EVER return your money

  2. You are a cost and therefore they want to ship you in as cheap a manner as legally possible.

Having said that, what can you as a frequent traveller do to ameliorate the hassle of flying? Well, if you must travel frequently, get on the frequent flyer plan - buy your way into the upper echelons of it if you can - high tier frequent flyers are put at the top of standby lists, are the first to be upgraded to first class and generally are treated like human beings, unlike the majority of travellers who are treated exactly as the airlines see them - as cattle.

Also, KNOW YOUR ROUTES ! For any given travel day, I know all the possible combinations to get me from my departure to my destination for that day. I know all connections, even on other airlines, so that if Delta hoses me on a connection than at least I know what my options are with other carriers.

Lastly, go to the airport with the EXPECTATION of long waits to check in (yes…I almost always have to check my bags and you should too - I’m incredibly frustrated with people who expect to take “carry on” bags the size of a small living room on the plane with them), delays in departure, particularly around holidays, and everything else that can go wrong.

If you expect and prepare for trouble and it doesn’t happen, then you will have a nice, pleasant surprise. If trouble finds you, as it all too often does, at least you weren’t unprepared for it and can better react to it.

Just my two pennies’ worth.

I open my mouth and the whole world turns smart

10

Mjoliner posts:

Actually, this is not much different from many major cities with a small, convenient airport near downtown or residential areas & a large inconvenient airport out in the sticks. (Reagan National vs. Dulles for DC)

The major goal isn’t to extort money from airlines, but to minimize noise & overhead traffic for the people who bought thir houses with no clue there was an airport nearby.

IIRC, Reagan National Airport has no international flights, no nonstop flights to or from points west of the Mississippi, and no flights from 2400 to 0600. Dulles has none of these restrictions, but also a 30-45 minute minimum drive into DC & no mass transportation.

If anyone benefitted from the restrictions against Love Field, it was Southwest who has most of the gates at Love now & a virtual monopoly to many regional cities.

Sue from El Paso

Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.

11

AA - pure shit for travel, at an incredibly expensive rate.

I’m with you all on this one. You try explaining to some idiot at Chicago (on a flight to Oakland) that a Seeing Eye Dog IS NOT flown cargo but always accompanies its master (in this occasion, me). They refused to let me board because the people who were slated to sit beside me had a child with allergies, and the dog just could NOT be on board. Ok, I understand about allergies, but why not RESEAT the family of tree, on this flight with a 15% seat vacancy??? Noooo… they just could not move them. Or me.

I now fly United - and so far, have had NO problems whatsoever. They remember to board me half an hour before, don’t seat me beside emergency exits (yeah, let the legally blind woman lead people to safety, that makes sense!), and always remember to call in for a hand at the next connection point/destination. Not only that, but hey, I don’t have to fight them (unlike the AA fuckers) about getting a bulkhead seat so I don’t have to store the fucking dog under the seat in front of me (he doesn’t fit, damn it, can’t they understand that?)

Aaaaaagh!

Wrote to AA about this, they apologized, but got a nice long reprimand note from the CNIB =-)

Made my day.

“Semper Ubi Sub Ubi.” =-)

12

Ugh.
Add me to the American Airlines haters club as well.

I was just going from Reno to Los Angeles. 3 flights in a row were delayed…

1st flight: they had the plane, but the pilot was on another delayed plane from somewhere or other

2nd flight: they had the pilot, but his plane was delayed from somewhere else (this was my flight)

3rd flight: they had neither the pilot nor the plane. They were both in yet a third place. Delayed, of course.

Oh and all three flights were overbooked like crazy (i know airlines do this a lot, but 3 in a row needing to put people up at hotels?)

So we finally (4 hours late) get on a plane, and we wait for 30 minutes for tire maintanance… ok good. Then we wait for permission to take off. ok fine. Then we finally get in the air and arrive at LAX.

Now they tell us that we have to wait to get our lane clear to the gate… 30 minutes.

Then there is another plane “at our gate”, turns out its another AA plane unloading cargo. Grrrrr.

We all started chanting “Bring a bus!” “Bring a bus!”. Did American volunteer vouchers? tickets? first class upgrades? NO. They yelled back at us “WE HEAR YOU!!”.

ANOTHER 40 minutes later, we get off of the plane, some 8 hours after we got to the airport at Reno. I could have driven.

And never a nice thing from AA in exchange. United or Southwest for me from now on.

-Shad

P.S. If you are flyin into SFO at all, don’t take united. They pack so many flights together that one fog bank there in SFO delays United waaay more than other airlines, in my experience. Take southwest.

13

Oh, and one more thing, maybe I’m just being paranoid, but I wondered if maybe AA called me about the delay so I wouldn’t show up for an overbooked flight. Maybe there wasn’t ever any delay. The lady at the desk said they called people about the flight and then they didn’t remember who they called. So they didn’t call them back.

–Gail
“Predictable, really I suppose. It was an act of purest optimism to have posed the question in the first place.” --John Cleese

14

Mjollnir said:

Some background on Love Field and the Wright Ammendment:

Prior to the opening of DFW Airport, both Dallas and Fort Worth operated separate airports (Dallas - Love Field; Fort Worth - Greater Southwest International Airport). The Civil Aeronautics Board (the predecessor to the FAA), which regulated airline routes, determined that it was unfeasible and inefficient to support two airports so close together and demanded that the two cities build a joint airport (DFW). Both cities agreed to close their respective airports, which Fort Worth did (Greater Southwest was located directly south and adjacent to the future DFW airport). Also, all airlines serving both airports agreed to move their operations to the new airport.

As the new airport was being built, Southwest Airlines was born and began offering service from Love Field. When DFW opened in 1974, all airlines except Southwest moved to it. Southwest successfully argued in a case decided by the US Supreme Court that since it didn’t sign the original agreements to move to DFW (unlike the other airlines), it shouldn’t be forced to move from Love Field. Southwest was allowed to offer service from Love, but only to other cities in the state of Texas. Thus, Love Field remained open, despite Dallas’ commitment to close its airport just as Fort Worth had.

With the deregulation of the airline industry in the late 70s, the Wright Amendment was created to allow Southwest to fly to cities outside of Texas, specifically the four states that border Texas (Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and New Mexico). Also, the Wright Amendment allowed for Love service to anywhere, provided the plane had fewer than 56 seats. This was seen as a compromise that would allow Southwest to expand its service and at the same time protect Dallas and Fort Worth’s investments in DFW. A few years ago, the Shelby Amendment was created to expand the Love Field service area to include Mississippi, Alabama, and Kansas, although I’m not sure if Southwest or anyone else is offering any service to these three states yet.

So to correct a few inaccuracies in your post:

  1. Airlines flying into Dallas are not required to fly into DFW. Only those that fly large planes from areas outside the eight-state region are required to use DFW. (And possibly only those that signed the original agreements to move to DFW. Continental is in litigation now to determine if it can fly small regional jets with 56 or fewer seats into Love under its Continental Express banner, despite its having signed the original agreements.)

  2. American Airlines is headquartered in Fort Worth, not Dallas.

  3. Southwest Airlines is the airline that has benefited the most from the Wright Amendment, as it allowed them to expand their service area. But after the fact, American has used it to create its stranglehold on DFW (60 to 70% of all DFW flights are American).

  4. Newt Gingrich could give Jim Wright a run for his money in the “Most Crooked House Speaker” category any day. :slight_smile:

15

Majormd wrote:

I can’t speak for other cities, but I doubt that anyone has bought a house near Love Field with no clue that there was an airport nearby. Love Field has been in existence since the 1920s.

BTW, how can you possibly by a house near an airport and have no clue that the airport is there. I mean, wouldn’t the planes landing overhead be a big tip off?

16

Um…

Either you’re missing my sarcasm, or I’m missing yours. But you should hear the residents of Alexandria, VA complain about air traffic at National airport. But when they put their house up for sale they’ll promote it as convenient to the airport…

Sue from El Paso

Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.

17

Sorry, Sue! I did miss the sarcasm. Ooops! :wink:

I too find it interesting when a homeowner near an airport complains about the noise of airplanes landing and taking off overhead. Hello??? You bought a house under the flight path of an airport! What did you expect?

Now, if the airport was built after you bought your house, then maybe you have a point.

18

KEPI – Thanks for the info. You have solved a long-standing mystery for me.

When I tried to fly from Spokane, WA, to Dallas, TX via Southwest, I was told that I couldn’t do it on one ticket – something I had never encountered from any airline before. They said they could fly me to Albuquerque, NM, and THEN to Dallas, but I would have to de-plane, collect my luggage, re-check my luggage and fly to Dallas under another ticket. They did not explain why this should be, but your history of the Wright Amendment does – if they can only offer service to bordering states (including NM), then they can’t, apparently, include connecting flights to or from other locations.

In case you’re interested, my response to the two-ticket proposal was “the heck with that.” I flew Delta which, while not my first choice, at least only made me buy one ticket.

Jodi

Fiat Justitia

19

Jodi -

You’re absolutely right. Southwest is not allowed to offer through-ticketing to or from Love Field. In order to fly into or out of Love, the passenger’s ticket must originate and terminate in one of the eight allowable states. In fact, that is part of the legal problem facing Continental. Continental Express flies small regional jets to Houston to connect with larger Continental flights to other parts of the country and world. They also want to fly the same small jets (56 or fewer seats) to their hub in Cleveland, but American and the city of Fort Worth have gotten an injunction order to prevent them from doing that.

The whole thing is a big mess. Fort Worth, joined by American, is suing Dallas for not following the original agreement to close Love Field and for allowing increased flights out of Love. Dallas, joined by Continental and a start-up airline called Legend, is countersuing saying that the Wright and Shelby Amendments, as well as Dept of Transportation rulings, prohibit Dallas from limiting flights out of Love. I predict the whole matter will have to be settled by another Supreme Court ruling.

20

Kepi:

  1. OK. Only airlines serving 80% of the population are required to fly into DFW.

  2. OK. That was still Mr. Wright’s district wasn’t it?

  3. OK. Doesn’t that fit in with “2” above, so far as AA is concerned?

  4. How? (politics aside–a specific example of “crookedness”)

And BTW, I have nothing against DFW so far as making connections. But if I were flying to Dallas specifically (as I had to do in the past year), Love Field would have been much more convenient.