AA called to inform of cancelled flight.
 

I was booked on AA 1694 STL-LGA today. Had a B-fare reservation set up for airport ticketing. I have no status on AA. They just called to inform me that my flight has been cancelled.

Does AA usually call passengers when a flight is cancelled?

Yes. Last time, AA called me at 2 a.m. to advise that they were cancelling a 7 a.m. flight and putting me on a 9:20 a.m. Unfortunately, they woke me up. Fortunatly, they saved me more than two hours of downtime at the airport. Unfortunately, I lost my upgrade.

AA does try to call everyone on cancelled flights. We don't always succeed for several reasons, the main ones being, wrong or agencies numbers in the pnr or profile and just too many pnrs on the queue to be called.

This is not part of the new customer service plan because I called cancelled flights when I was a new hire four years ago. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/biggrin.gif

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[This message has been edited by RDURES1 (edited 01-19-2001).]

AA has called me several times to advise me of a cancelled flight, change of flight numbers and times, etc. But on Jan 5th, they called 3 hours before flight time to tell me that my flight (DFW-MSY) was delayed 2 hours. That was most appreciated and certainly exceeded my expectations!

The courtesy call backfired on me. During the pilot strike Feb. two years ago I was told by my TA on Saturday afternoon I was protected on another flight Monday afternoon to LAX since my AA flight cancelled out of RDU. AA called at 3am Monday morning to give me the same message. Although the customer service call was well-intentioned, at that hour a call usually means someone died or is near death. It rattled my wife and I so much we couldn't get back to sleep. The rep that called realized that I was rebooked after reading further down her monitor, so the call could have been avoided. This was one reason I cancelled several other upcoming AA flights back then.

AA has called me a bunch of times and also rebooked me on alternate flights on the phone. The last time the agent called me back on the cell-phone while I was going to the airport. Was set with the alternate arrangements, by the time I got to the aiport http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif.

AA's been good to me on this -- even before I had status.

It's one of the reasons I think AA is probably the best run major airline in the US.

At the end of NOv 2000, when the southeast was getting snow, I was recently called by Delta when my returning flight (originating in Savannah) connecting through Atlanta to ORD was cancelled (supposedly "weather" but more likely pilot trouble). In looking at recheduling I told them I didn't want a two hour wait in cincinnati with weather uncertainties. So they flew me to DFW, and put me on an AA our of DFW to ORD. I couldn't be happier. A free mileage run - I would have booked the original ticket on AA except they were 3 times the price of Delta to Savannah. I got my triple miles, 802x3 on AA, and almost as much on Delta as I would have with the original itinerary.I have no status on Delta. I think the airlines don't want a lot of unhappy passengers waiting and complaining at the airport and then demanding to be compensated in some way. Actually, it reminds me of when flying back to ORD from DFW (originating in Mexico), my flight was cancelled - not knowing this until check-in, I asked that my Frequent Flyer ticket be rebooked in a class of service that gave me miles. They did.

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DtG

Once I was booked RDU-ORD-NRT. AA called about 5 am on the day of departure and told me that my RDU-ORD flight had been canceled, but there was an open seat on an earlier RDU-ORD flight. I was able to get moving and make the earlier flight -- a good thing, because it can be very difficult to book a same-day seat in C or F to NRT, and loss of a day would have fouled up my business schedule in Tokyo.

I have been called, but good luck trying to get a first class seat back. they won't do anything to help you on another airline, even though it's their fault that the flight is cancelled. Plat. status means nothing. Turning a 5 hour first class coast to coast flight into an 8 hour coach connection at bad times means nothing.

I've had two very bad and disappointing experiences.

Nologic, I don't quite understand what you're saying above. If you're flying upgraded transcon and the flight is cancelled and the other transcons are full, there are four options:

1. Find you a domestic connection that has upgrade F seats open, and force the upgrade. This could be difficult if you're using JFK because no JFK-ORD.

2. Force an upgrade on #1 even if there is only revenue F space available. Might happen, might not, but only if you're polite to the agent and don't take the cancellation out on him/her. This is what I think should happen, by the way.

3. Find you a coach seat on a competitor's transcon. Why should the competition upgrade you and a dozen other people for free?

4. Overbook you and everybody else on a later transcon, forcing the airline to downgrade multiple people from J to Y or worse yet from F to J. Why should you lose the next time the transcon before you gets cancelled??

Maybe I'm missing something here, but I'm not sure what you wanted AA to do.

AA has called me a few times, but not all the time in the past. Recently, I have been calling the day before and giving them several contact numbers, home, cell, pager.. to notify me. This has been working a lot better, especially on reservations made several months in advance.

Believe it or not, AA called me when I was in MCO area and told me that my morning LAX-DFW flight for that day was canceled and will rebook me on an afternoon flight, the amazing part is that I was never in LAX!

Anyway, it was kind of weird.

Al

At the risk of sounding like a nagging res agent, if at the time of making your reservation, everyone would give us current phones, downline phones or some way to reach you in case of flight delay or cancellation, a. you would get called sooner and more frequently, and b. you have a better shot at getting a more satisfactory solution.

Believe it or not, I have pulled up EP Profiles and the phones have not been changed since three or four moves ago. I know none of my FT buddies are guilty of this.

Also, if you book through an agency, insist that they put *your* numbers in the reservation. I can't tell you how many times I have pulled up a reservation in the system and it has had only agency numbers and we either can't reach the agency, or the so-called after hours number has someone that could care less whether you get notified or not.

There are good valid reasons we ask for the phone numbers and it's not so we can keep tabs on you. The people that call cancelled flights (not an exec desk function) do not have time to pull up each individual profile to check for numbers. If there are 1800 pnrs in a queue to be called, it needs to be done as expeditiously as possibly. For this we need current information in the reservation.

Also, because it has caused problems in the past, we do not rebook Exec Plats until we speak to the member personally, or his/her designated travel co-ordinator. We used to rebook EP's but too many times what we booked wasn't convenient so we ended up with angry passengers.

One other minor detail. If it is okay for us to give out information to your wife/gf/bf/secretary, etc., you need to have it either in the record or your profile. Due to the conditions in society today, i.e. stalking, etc., we cannot give out passenger information to anyone whose name is not in the record or at least in the member profile.
If you had ever pulled up the record of a woman who was being stalked, you'd understand. It isn't pretty. We do, unfortunately have some agents that will give the info out but we are not supposed to and most of us won't. Esp those of us with a grain of common sense. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/biggrin.gif


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[This message has been edited by RDURES1 (edited 01-22-2001).]

AA called me this morning to notify me that my flight LAX-SJC was cancelled, which was good and bad. Bad, because I was woke up at 3:00 a.m. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/frown.gif, but good, because after I got off the phone with AA, I got an extra hour of sleep, andI didn't end up at the airport just to find out that my original flight was cancelled and that the next flight was full and there was no more space on the standby list.

Thanks AA.