Originally Posted by
mmjaysee
Wow, you travel 200K mostly-domestic miles a year and live near SFO? I can't believe you ever flew AA in the first place. UA definitely makes the most sense for you.
On another note, I had no clue AA even had an SFO pilots base. They should have closed that down a while ago... can't see how it lasted this long given their strategy/cornerstone cities.
Let me tell you, in 2009 it was easy. We had the STL and BOS and SNA and HNL options, a whole lot more 767s and 757s, and upgrades were usually fairly easy. The schedule provided mostly for connections, but they were convenient and I generally wouldn't have to sweat out an upgrade as an EXP.
I had been with AA since 2006, since living in Southern Illinois (MWA/STL) back when it was a hub operation-and was mainly pretty satisfied, and didn't see any reason to change after achieving status on AA for the first time.
After the last two year's consistent cuts to destinations and capacity cuts to the hubs, the picture was bleaker and I experienced more delays/cancellations/IRROPs than ever before--because of these situations that understandably are out of AA's control, I would find that getting rebooked would be a challenge since there were few flights with empty seats.
That, among other issues that I had with the way AA handled certain problems I faced, made me decide it was time for a change. As I have said before there are things that I miss, but the schedule/CR1s/IRROPs operation was the make-or-break for me.
AA has clearly decided that the Bay Area doesn't matter-and the many of us that have switched loyalties as a result wish them and their employees all the best