Dave Noble

The TA did not split up the group, AA did
The TA will have booked group travel for the group with the not so unreasonable expectation that AA will transport the group

It was AA's staff that chose to deny boarding to part of the group.

Unless the group arrived after the recommended check in time or the TA did not book it as group travel , then the only place where I can see fault is with AA

The only fault that the passengers / TA have , is that they booked on AA and not a carrier capable of handling school groups imo

reeg2

Agreed.

ijgordon

Is OLCI even possible for a large group?

PerroneFord

What an amazing thread. Having been on FT for a relatively short time, I certainly can't say I know the intricacies of CoC, nor am I well versed in what GA's can do.

Having been a soccer coach for 19 years, I can say that I have flown myself and my teams cross country numerous times. Done it with both HS and college level teams. Clearly, though many here are well versed from the airline side of things, many are not well versed in group travel.

I can tell you that when I had to fly with my college team from ATL-LAX with 30 people, we won our game on Saturday afternoon, and needed to leave for California on Tuesday. The school had not budgeted for the trip so fundraising was done all weekend. The entire idea of flying 30 people, many of whom had never flown in their lives, and expecting ANYONE in that group to know about airline policies is crazy. Even some of the chaperones hadn't flown in 10 or more years.

In another instance, I had a HS aged group flying from DAL to TLH through ATL. Got weather delayed overnight in ATL. No hotel offers, no nothing. The entire airport was shut down. CNN came out to do interviews at ATL. It was utter chaos. Fortunately, I was a somewhat FF, and we had numerous parents who were also, and we got through it.

I feel bad for the kids. They were the losers in this scenario. Flying those kids to Dallas was a poor compensation. AA should have eaten the cost, got them another plane even if on another carrier, and done it right. To those who say this cannot be done, I call BS. I have worked with (and still do on occasion) an ACC school. And they don't charter everything. The football team flys. The basketball team flies. The band, baseball, soccer, etc. All have 20+ people who are NOT going to get split up. This happens every day all around the country. Hundreds of colleges, pro teams, high school teams, little league teams, etc.

If AA's software can't flag a block of 27 with minors, then they deserved the PR they got.

allenh91801

I agree. This could have been handled so much better.

IceTrojan

Or... not. School reps should have read the COCs before flying, especially the part about oversales. We all have to know them, or should have to know them. Ignorance is not a defense.

MaineFlyer16

Are you kidding me? Get real. Honestly.

IceTrojan

If they're not ready to deal with the hazards of traveling and being caretakers, maybe they shouldn't be leading such a large group of young humans across the country.

jamar

I still remember a school trip I took to Phuket on TG. On our way back, there was an issue connecting at BKK, and you bet they started asking for volunteers, then IDBing other people and never once suggested breaking up the school group. Sure, a few classmates had *Silver (their parents took them on mileage runs? Family vacations to exotic locales? Heck if I know) but still they never suggested breaking off any of us non-status students.

beerup

Maybe that's because your group got seat assignments before the travel day and weren't that last people on the flight to check in. No one in the 200+ posts in this thread has speculated that the group were targeted for IDB because they were a group.

FlyDeltaJets87

Well for one, AA's CoC has been quoted in this thread, and AA's IDB procedures are not clearly laid out, but instead include a lot of room for lee-way, which could have easily been applied in this situation.

Also, the push by the GA to split the group was about the dumbest thing I've heard. If the GA was going to deny 6 in the group, he/she should have at least said "I can IDB the whole group" and offered IDB compensation to the entire group. While still lousy, that might have been a better option, but I'm sure the GA wouldn't want to have to explain IDBing 27 people (or more), plus AA being liable for the other expenses that are lost on the other end because of the IDB. I did find AA's UM regulations and this group (assuming that since they're 8th graders, they're all 13-14 years old) could technically travel on their without having to pay UM fees. However, this opens a whole can of worms because school policy and district or state law may have prevented this (in fact, I would be surprised if it doesn't, mandating a chaperone to student ratio). We don't know what type of options the 6 who were getting IDBed were offered, but they may not have all been on the same flight, which really would be an issue. School policy would almost certainly prohibit a student flying unsupervised across the country while on an official school trip, and should IROPs come into play for those students while stuck in the layover, the situation becomes even worse.

jamar

And I'm saying that they shouldn't even have been in the running for an IDB. And for the record, we did get our seat assignments the day of travel; our trip was an "eco-tourism" thing that took us to places that didn't have anything to check-in with before returning to HKT (the airport) for departure.

jeremysmith

Thumper

First, I confess to skipping the middle 8 pages of posts.
Children traveling to Washington is a very cool thing.

My concern here is what constitutes for many a "special circumstance" and who gets to determine who goes first. Do we need at new TOC that reads to the effect:

School children traveling to National Capital trump School traveling for sports.
School children traveling for sports trump illness travel.
Bereavement travel trumps sports travel.
EXPs traveling trump sick adults, lose to sick children.
Death travel trumps handicapped travel.
Handicapped travel trumps sick mother, dying father
PLTs trump, well, only Gold of course...........
and so on.........

In the world of entitlement, I assure you everyone can make a very good case as to why they are the most important person on the plane (other than me, of course. DYKWIA?)

At some point a business has to make rules and regulations that can be applied the majority of the time. The biggest crime here was mentioned briefly on page 3 or 4 - Sensationalist headlines created to sell news! And the key component in this is there must be clear victim and there must be a clear villain. Children stranded was a lousy stab at reducing a complex issue to 6 words or less.

So I guess this places me firmly in the AA apologist column.

jmastron

While some posters keep making this an issue of who should have been IDBed because it gets some "elite" in a lather about not getting their "benefits", it really isn't the issue -- I have no issue with the school group being IDBed if necessary, over anyone else.

What was absolutely unacceptable was the GA attempting to split the group of 12 year olds by falsely threatening to make them repurchase their tickets. I'm sorry, this just isn't acceptable, any more than it would be to insist that my 7 or 9 year old travel alone because I'm with them and they only need one IDB. The entire group gets IDBed, reaccommodated, and compensated, or not. Since that may be difficult or costly to do for a group of 20+, AAs policies allow *AA* to prioritize the IDBs in a way that helps *AA*. The GA was out of line here, and should be reprimanded, pure and simple.

All the other side issues (seat assignments which may or may not have been available, as seats are often held back, and is not listed by AA as an IDB criteria anyway, and online checkin, which from what I can find at least used to not be available to groups of 10+ anyway) are not really relevant. In the end, AA screwed up, and apparently only did the partially-right thing after the media showed up.