Originally Posted by
scubadu
Personally, I think it's despicable to bump full fare, paying passengers from business/first to make room for pilots, particularly on long haul flights, I don't care what the contract provides for. Airline management should have never made that concession.
As a traveler, you're absolutely correct.
As a businessperson, the answer is -as always- AA is brain-dead and customer-last, but they could have allowed that concession, then taken measures to ensure that it -both- was used as little as possible and that the customer was fairly (and easily/automatically/etc). compensated for the downgrade. It appears that AA has done none of those things, and thus we're here today commiserating with Breuer and laughing yet again at AA incompetence.
I don't know if it still exists today (although I have no reason to believe it doesn't,) but AA used to build deadhead trips from CLT to DFW. Their two largest bases. I can't fathom the organizational incompetence needed for it to happen twice, much less be designed into the system. (I have no doubt this would be a useful tool during IRROPS or during a schedule change, something like that. But not on a random Wednesday DFW<>CLT.)