Dave Noble

There is a difference between asking what a term means and what reads to me asserting that AA is incorrect since it fails to meet what you believe it should mean. Asking for clairification is perfectly sensible. I personally cannot see that AA is in breach of the CoCs in what it has done

Personally, I doubt that it will be viewed that AA must not charge the surcharges on BA flight redemptions due to not charging on AA ; if it is viewed that the 2 should be treated equal my expectation is that there will be an overall loss with AA charging the same surcharges on both rather than dropping it on BA

flyertalker54234

I fear there is some interpretation occurring here. Also there seems to be a mixing of two issues.
Partners in a JBV with anti trust immunity may seek to commonize their offering but the granting of such immunity does not require an identical Offering. BA operate a Coach Plus 4th class AA do not. AA and BA offer differing meal services on different flights. AA and BA both have some similar planes but there is no requirement for the same route to have the same equipment. Many fares especially restricted First and Business have different levels by carrier. Metal neutral is no guarantee of consumer commonality but it does allow airlines to sell seats on other carriers through aligned systems.

Frequent flyer plans are an attempt to build loyalty without establishing a provision on the balance sheet. Miles have no commercial value, people can be thrown out for breaking the rules without compensation and schemes can be closed without compensation. An award ticket has different remedies to a revenue ticket as it is easier to prove loss With a revenue ticket.

I would be interested if this was to result in an action going to appeal. I doubt public policy concerns would hold an American business liable for the practices of a foreign independent partner not regulated under Federal Jurisdiction.

As regards language on this forum to attempt to belittle posters' positions, most people would find this regrettable. With the most respect the opinions of those on this forum are just personal opinions and not Government policy or legal precedent.

dazza189

Great post rjlon.

JonNYC

It's a sincere, well though-out and well written post as are quite a few others in this thread.

But, if you don't mind me asking, at this juncture are you attempting to "win over hearts and minds" as it were, getting the highest number of posters to agree with your P.O.V. compared to other views -OR- do you actually see these posts as getting you closer to getting what you want in this instance?

Is that last goal now a lost cause in your mind? I can't quite see where "all this goes" simply based on a few posters on FT agreeing with your outrage vs a few that maybe do not.

Is there a goal or just a desire to express disenchantment, etc. NO offense intended, genuinely asking.

bedelman

I faced a similar question after filing my DOT complaints about price advertising violations by AA, BA, and others. My goal was to participate in Flyertalk (and other online discussions) in order to facilitate public understanding of these questions. Of course some people already understand their rights or already think they understand... but there's a silent majority that says nothing and may benefit from additional discussion and clarification.

One major problem here is that carriers make false statements of passengers' rights, and passengers take those false statements at face value. That ought not happen. Online discussion -- findable with search engines etc. -- can help affected passengers realize that they may have more rights than carriers have advised.

airb330

It's always good to see things from another perspective. While I may not agree 100% with some of those posts/posters you casually mention, I have learned from a thing or two in this thread as well from them. Trust me, the AA forum is one of the nicest on Flyertalk. If this was almost any other forum, the real cheerleaders would be quite rude and defensive of United, Delta, etc. I'm not really seeing that here.

While I believe this conversation is interesting regarding metal neutrality, do most of us agree AA could have did a better job re-routing him? Even if it isn't on the BA flight, an AA flight through RDU isn't great. Even a PM JFK-LHR non-stop with a sincere personal E-Mail apology might have avoided the whole scenario.

flyertalker54234

Answering for myself, I believe there are multiple routes to influence airlines in the choices they make. One can communicate directly which works well on individual cases but less so on policy or schedule issues. One can bring legal action which requires locus standi and loss and works better in individual cases. The third method is to engage in public discourse and raise issues of concern on blogs and social media. Airlines watch their PR almost as closely as their costs. Too much negative opinion will prompt action if financially it is considered viable and aligned to strategy. The key though is for the debate to be logical, factual and reasonable.
I think the original Poster was offered a poor substitute and that calling AA he could have got a better result on a daytime service via ORD or a non stop in the evening. AA always issue an automatic rebook as their computer systems do it automatically but agents can amend easily without charge as this is an airline reroute.
Asking for AA to pay the costs of moving the OP to another airline is in my view unreasonable. Asking the DOT to force a foreign carrier to change its mileage rewards program is unreasonable. However expressing anger on a cancellation of schedule or route is very reasonable as is expressing a desire to avoid a particular carrier because of predatory conduct.
It is of secondary concern to me whether I influence posters. My aim is to air reasonable complaints that if voiced by sufficient numbers will make AA think differently within policy and budgetary constraints.
You ask for 10% you may get 5% you ask for 100% you get laughed at and zero.

dazza189

I was sincere in my appreciation of rjlon's post as well. (just wanted to make that clear in case people thought I was being snarky) - and no i'm not trying to win over hearts and minds. People will either agree with my position and approach or disagree with them, I honestly don't mind which. In fact I hope I would learn more from the people opposed to my point of view than those who agree with it. I'm certainly not averse to modifying my position when presented with compelling argument, nor am I afraid of accepting I might be in the wrong.

I also wouldn't classify my position as outrage - miffed is probably closer to the mark.

As i'm sure all of us have, I've experienced my fair share of things happening to me while traveling on many different airlines, from being bumped, downgraded, lost bags, split from my companion (I even got stuck for a week or so in Europe during the volcano incident) - all the way to the more positive experiences - from free upgrades, to complimentary lounge access during delays, to free hotel stays for mechanicals causing disconnects, to a free spare seat for a baby seat etc. Most of the time i'm either happy with the resolution or accept that nothing can be done, but occasionally I don't agree with the position the carrier or their representatives are taking and i've learnt sometimes it's better to speak up rather than just blindly accept what you're being told. (mostly thanks to informative information here on flyertalk)

For example:
It took me a year to get refunded business class APD taxes after being reaccommodated in economy class, even though every agent I spoke to told me that I wasn't due a refund. (Turns out I was - I wouldn't have even thought about it unless someone else had posted on flyertalk about a similar experience)
I often read threads explaining that people should politely hang up the phone and try again if they are encountering particularly unhelpful or unknowledgeable agents - that has often times served me well.
I was once told at the gate that I couldn't travel in international first due to a VIP needing my seat and that i'd need to travel in business - and that I wasn't due anything in return as I had purchased my seat with miles. (they didn't even want to give my the mile differential back as it was a multi-segment trip, regardless of the fact only one leg had first class on it!) Due to the wealth of knowledge shared on here (and other places) I felt that that just wasn't right and after some reasonable discussions with the appropriate person I had a mileage refund and a $700 travel cert in hand before I even boarded the plane. (I'm sure I could have gotten more, but I was happy with that outcome mainly due to the fact it was last flight of the night and I was only going for the weekend. It was certainly more reasonable to me than the original position taken by the gate agents, which many a consumer would have simply accepted.)

At the end of the day I don't think you need to be outraged to avail yourself of government agencies to try to get clarification on what you think is a confused position, even if it's just so you know for sure that the airlines are doing the right thing. It's certainly not a route I would normally take, and never frivolously or just to cause trouble, but in this case there seems to be enough contradictory information abound that i've chosen to avail myself of this option. Mainly it's because the very first agent I spoked to after the reschedule notice had actually given me exactly what I wanted with very little prompting from me, and then they tried to rescind it two weeks later. Honestly if the first agent had actually just said, "Sorry you can only change to AA metal or pay a surcharge to fly on the BA flight", I would have probably grumbled a bit and then just shrugged it off and picked one of the different options. However the tax thing obviously bothers me too - originally just enough to point it out on each and every call but even more so now after I started looking into the DOT's previous decisions around AA's behavior.

It seems like even the people on this board (whom I consider to be way more knowledgable about the industry and specifically the AA frequent flyer program than the average consumer, and often times some airline reps) have plenty of disagreement over what various statements, terms of carriage, website rules and proclamations actually mean, so my only goal now is to get clarification on some of that from an authoritative source.

Whichever way it goes consumers in general will then have a clear definition of what our actual rights are in similar situations. I'm happy to share that information here as it seems more than just I care about it. I've also been happy to share my position with people who seek further clarification in this thread, but I certainly don't have an agenda to get random people from an internet forum to agree with my POV

(No offense intended to the wonderful random people of this internet forum - without whom I would be considerably less knowledgable about many things frequent flyer related! )

Dave Noble

No. If you look at post 91 , the OP admits that aslo evening JFK-LHR and ORD-LHR were offered . The OP specifically wanted to book the daytime service and AA declined to pay for the hotel

flyertalker54234

Was the LGA-ORD-LHR daytime flight offered?

Dave Noble

The poster is based in Boston and I don't think that there is a service from BOS-LGA that would work

hillrider

flyertalker54234

Apologies, with the references to the NY direct I thought it was NYC as AA have dropped BOS from LHR. It is possible to route BOS-ORD-LHR same day using AA15 and AA90 arriving in the evening in London and leaving BOS about 6.15 am.

Dave Noble

I believe the issue that the OP says he has is that the connecting flight isn't operating ( post 35 ) which is what has caused the issue. From 14th May , on wednesdays AA15 doesn't operate

flyertalker54234

Then not much he can do. I would overnight at ORD as prior posted as I dislike short red eyes across the Atlantic and BA in equal proportions.
Maybe this is start of AA pulling out of Boston completely? Flights out of London are much worse for Connections in the new timetable. Then as my travel is
Normally revenue it is easy to swap to UAL though their service is worse than BA.