Jerry_Maguire

I for one was not too thrilled with the 7500 miles I was offered as an EXP delayed Tuesday. I was stuck 14 hrs in Miami and finally reached Tampa just after 2 AM. I'd have rented a car and driven, except for (a) I had checked baggage and (b) no one ever said we were going to fly out of MIA at 1 AM - they just kept canceling flights then delaying the one that they left on the schedule.

I had a 6 hour delay in Detroit on DL lat month as lowly Gold traveling economy and was offered proactively offered 10,000 miles and a $150 travel voucher. That had made me feel good. AA's offer, not so much...

AJLondon

My original routing credit has now credited.

Both EQP and EQM are updated correctly, as is RDM, but number of sectors is unchanged. Doesn't really bother me as I plan to re qualify on EQP.

andyr

There is a lot of coverage of how AA pro-actively moved people onto other airlines etc. In my case, this wasn't true at all.

Last Tuesday, I was flying BOS/ORD/LHR, waited 2 hours in line, then rerouted to BOS/JFK/LHR on AA metal, the BOS/JFK delayed 15 minutes at a time for 2 hrs and then cancelled. Somewhere in the middle, the GA protected me on a BA JFK/LHR flight (since I was missing the last AA JFK/LHR flight) in J. When BOS/JFK cancelled, I was told by an AAdmirals club person (probably the rudest one I have ever encountered, starting 10 seconds in, and I swear I was completely polite) and then by a TA, that policy didn't allow that and if I wanted to take the BA non-stop I would be in Y (and, of course, in a last minute i.e. lousy seat). I was invited to "go find the GA who did that for you and she can lose her job, but I need my job as I have to feed my kids".

Last year, had a similar misconnect situation and AA put me into BA J without my even asking for it.

I've asked AA Customer Relations a bunch of specific questions about what the policy actually is, but have not yet heard back.

Ironically, if I had taken the next flight to ORD I would have caught my original flight, so allowing the reroute through JFK instead of ORD was the first mistake, but at the time there was no information available about *anything* (all flights were showing as on time even though no one was being checked in to get to the gates). AA 98 went out pretty full when I checked, so it may have been absorbing other misconnects making JFK/LHR a better option for AA to put me on, although not as it turns out a great option for me in the end.

So, given a confirmed seat in J (C), and a AA driven misconnect, would you expect to be put in BA J or BA Y ?

(We're all one big happy codeshare family, aren't we ... that's why we no longer have BOS/LHR on AA metal, yes?)

vrbaba

I suppose the actual policy is to rebook on originally booked class of service. For e.g. if a domestic upgraded flight is changed, they will rebook in economy. So, I think the same principle applies. However, most agents will try to rebook in Business when an international upgraded segment is changed.

I was rebooked in IB J after my upgraded (SWU) AA metal from MAD was delayed. However, I think that has more to do with the AA agent in MAD, who tried to rebook all J pax to IB J.

You should get the SWU back at the least and rightly ask for clarification. I think more compensation will be granted because of the delay caused by AA systems.

869

With a confirmed upgrade on AA in place, you should have been booked into BA J.

If you encounter a rude/unhelpful employee, just politely move on and seek help elsewhere. It's not worth it. No excuse for that but I have no doubt that AA's customer-facing airport staff received more than their share of BS on tuesday so not entirely surprising.

supergrandslam

Nope.

The Actual policy is http://www.travelingbetter.com/forum...ead.php?t=4870

vrbaba

Thanks for the reference, I think this gives a good confidence for a pax to ask for it. But that fact that its not published and widely known within AA family, still poses practical challenges as the OP experienced.

This would certainly give leverage (for compensation) for the OP's complaint when he writes to AA as long as the agent responding is aware of the policy (and the policy is in fact internally published and accepted).

txmusician

4:55PM flight from DFW-CUN was cancelled. Great GA got us on standby to MIA then on to CUN the next morning in business class. Standby worked and we had to purchase our own hotel in MIA. My fiancee is Gold, and she never received the 2500 mile bonus We also were not credited to have flown the DFW-MIA route yet. Wrote to AA this morning, got a reply back within a couple hours:

10,000 miles each into our AAdvantage accounts, we must submit receipts of dinner and hotel for reimbursement and then we need to contact AAdvantage to get the 2500 bonus and also flight credit for the DFW-MIA leg of our trip.

alphaeagle

About an hour or so after AA's systems went down I boarded a Chautauqua flight that they actually attempted to send to ORD, Their systems were working. Wasn't looking forward to being stuck in the crazy town of ORD rather than my own airport, but didn't see that I had much of a choice at the time as my flight out of ORD was showing on time

Luckily their system failed as well, and we were deplaned. Got re-booked and sent on my way. I would like to get ORC, but I was crediting towards Alaska Airlines. Will they credit that? Should I expect something else? I don't mind a token amount in my AA account if it comes to that, and nothing has shown up in my AA account yet. Just curious to hear if anyone else who hasn't automatically gotten something in their AA account have gotten anything.

andyr

[Ref post #63]

Thanks for the input and the reference to the policy on TB. That posting was from March 2011, so not sure whether it is still true, but it is aligned with what has happened to me in the past.

Still waiting to hear from AA on my questions.

Agree that the A(not)Angel was probably overwhelmed after a terrible day, which is why I didn't mention the rude behavior in my email to AA. She normally is pretty reasonable to deal with.

Not that it is worth much, but my perspective is that if the upgrade has cleared, then it should be protected in J during IRROPS. In some cases (I have done this), a traveler may have picked a flight for a higher fare because it had C inventory, or because it had a lot of open seats and was very likely to clear. Once the upgrade has cleared, then the C seat has been paid for, either with miles+copay or an e-VIP, and once paid for I don't see that it is any different than a mileage ticket in J. If anything, I'd argue that a $600 coach fare + $600-800 e-VIP has as much or more "right" to be protected than a 50K award ($500 worth of miles).

I'm not looking for compensation, as I decided not to go and took the refund. I'd just like to know what the policy is, ideally in writing so I can present it to the AAdmirals Club folks when I travel next week.

JDiver

That's crAAp, of course. They need to have the available space, but AA will generally (IME) try to retain the SWU upgrade - they even did that for us before the JBA, when one could not earn / burn AA miles on BA, and our SFO-ORD flight was on ground hold, causing a schedule irregularity that made our connection onward to BRU (upgraded with SWUs) impossible; they put us on SFO-LHR in Club World, connecting to BA onward.

What I would expect would be determined by availability and employee customer-centeredness (the paying J/D/I reaccommodated passengers would take precedence for available BA CW seats), and you experienced a virtual vacuum in this instance, not to mention a lot of unnecessary posturing - not even willing to try.

supergrandslam

Even though it was 100% AA's fault, the situation on April 16th was a bit extreme, so I wouldn't surprise that AA was not able to rebook all upgraders in J on other OW flights.

JDiver

I agree with that - it's always dependent on availability and paid Business pax of various stripes would have priority over an SWU upgrade, IMO.

andyr

Perhaps I wasn't clear, sorry.

There were empty seats in J on the BA non-stop from BOS to LHR, which was the last choice available that day after the AA JFK/LHR flight and the BA JFK/LHR flights became non-viable when BOS/JFK delayed and then cancelled. The AA folks refused to put me on it. Y was fine, J was not, because "for what you paid for that ticket, there is no way I will put you in business on BA. You would not believe what we have to pay them for that seat.".

Understand that paid J flyers would come first, that wasn't the issue. The issue was that the AA people I spoke with would not put me in J because of what BA would charge AA to do it (or, more precisely, what the AAdmirals club agent thought the charge was, because I'm pretty sure the actual inter-airline price is not widely known).

The AAdmirals club agent was abrupt to the point of rude, while the TA I spoke with later was sympathetic and as helpful as she could be, but both were absolutely certain that they couldn't do it.

If the policy referenced on TB is in fact still the policy, and if "upgrades" includes e-VIPs (a debate, see the TB thread, but anecdotal evidence on both sides including my personal experience from last year supporting my position), then the AA folks obviously did not know about the policy.

If the policy has changed, I still think the massive failures on Tuesday should have resulted in AA being more flexible. Obviously my own self-interest speaking.

I have a flight I'm about to book for BOS/ORD/LHR on Saturday, and I'm still trying to find out from AA what the policy is before I book it.

jlin011

Not sure if this should go in the ORC thread instead, but since this is relevant to the Apr 16 downtime...

After my flight was cancelled last Tuesday 4/16 and placed onto a UA flight, I sent in a request for ORC (specifically referring to the computer issues and mentioning "Original Routing Credit") on Thursday 4/18 and received a response today, was denied and instead offered 15k RDM instead (already posted).

Probably not worth fighting this one, although it means I'll probably need to take a short r/t to requal for EXP again.