Originally Posted by
BONDY
One thing I have noticed about American Airlines, for example, is their lounge staff seem to have a lot more power, flexibility and training in case of issues. For example, when my girlfriend and I misconnected at JFK in June (weather related so "such is life") the lounge agent spent a long time trying to work through options to get us back to Tel Aviv as quickly as possible, hampered apparently by lack of 2 Business Class seats between JFK and Europe.
In the end he managed to re-book us on a direct flight with El Al leaving later that evening. This was a BA ticket, we were next due to take a BA flight but I said to the other half we would likely be better trying to get AA to sort it instead of leaving the AA terminal and going to the BA terminal check in.
And we were even invited to go and sit in the lounge while he was working through the ticketing and once done he said we could stay as long as we liked.
Can you imagine that happening in a BA Lounge? But why does it not?
BONDY
the AA lounge agents especially in key cities like JFK LAX SFO ORD and MIA are usually very senior and very experienced with all ticketing issues. that was one of the value props in getting a club membership when i started traveling in the early 2000s for work--in the event of irrops i knew i could just go to the lounge and thats why they are called AAngels.
less so today but vastly beyond anything a BA agent can do anymore. even pre-covid it was annoying to be in the Flounge and have some ticketing issue resolved only to be sent upstairs to the J lounge to have payment taken. now the ryanair-ification of ticketing services is complete, it is entirely unacceptable given the premiums we pay to fly BA. at least Ryanair even have (had?) one or two devoted ticketing/payment counters at STN!