dbilling

I had a flight cancelled Sunday due to thunderstorms in Dallas. While I certainly understand the cancellation to weather, what followed I find unacceptable.

1) I called the gold desk to rebook and it took me 5 hours on hold to get through to an agent. Hold times were over two hours and the system dropped me 2 times.
2) after finally getting through, American failed to find a flight for me on any airline for the same or next day. Their offer was to rebook me on Tuesday because of thunderstorms on Sunday.

I needed to get back home so I bought an expensive ($600) one-way ticket on Southwest. All in all, even after a partial refund from American for the unused portion of the ticket, I will be out over $400.

I complained to American today - requesting they do something more to compensate for their poor service - the long hold times and the failure to find a suitable rebooking. They offered me a paltry 5000 miles to compensate.

Can anyone help me with a strategy to get more out of them? I'm not a happy customer.

eponymous_coward

DFW was a mess due to thunderstorms- I was staying at an airport hotel that was originally empty, it filled up quickly. (I also had reservations on Monday, so I made it out OK.)

What's your expectation for when thousands of passengers have travel disrupted? Of course the hold times are bad, the lines are miserable, the options few and far between, etc.

dbilling

I'm actually very accepting of weather related delays. However, I expected their automatic rebooking service to work, it didn't. I expected their callback system to work so I didn't have to waste 5 hours waiting on hold, it didn't. And I expected that American should get me on the available flights from any available carrier the next day without me having to pay for it out of my own pocket. They didn't.

Those are my expectations. I don't think they are unreasonable.

TWAL10114Ever

When the largest hub cancels over 400 flights because of tornadoes and severe weather I'm not sure what you expect. As an EXPLAT I waited on hold almost 2 hours on Sunday before giving up and going to the airport to re-book. Instead of Sunday I came home this morning. When an EF1 tornado goes through the DFW area (as happened on Sunday) just chalk this one up to being at the wrong place at the wrong time. 5000 miles seems like a lot given the circumstances. You're not going to get any more.

iztok

To put you on any available carrier is not reasonable in VX situation. There were probably over ten thousand passengers in this situation. IMHO you got your money and extra 5k miles which seems fair enough.

eponymous_coward

When it's over 400 flights cancelled due to weather (not something they can control) and many thousands of passengers stranded, well, it is. They aren't obligated to give you anything other than your money back, let alone 5000 miles on top of it.

JDiver

Did you try the OSO number?

It's listed, with others, at the top of the "Pre-Consolidated" Forum, where we post about those issues still uniquely AA - fleet, operations, policies not about AAdvantage, etc.

I'm sorry you got caught up in the weather debacle; it looks like it's not over for this week, either. But what much more can an airline do? They can't produce aircraft and seats by pulling them out of a hat.

For Compensation, check the Compensation thread, which this is likely to be merged into. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...solidated.html

Mark_T

I mention this only because it goes to setting an appropriate expectation level, and remarkably nobody else already mentioned it

There is no 'Gold Desk'.

You are in a queue to the normal desk so any expectation of better service due to status should be set aside in this regard.

For the rest, I'd say take the miles and run, you should not get a better offer in the circumstances.

dbilling

Yes, there were tornadoes in Van, Texas on Sunday but I don't really buy the argument that the tornadoes affected DFW. What DFW had was thunderstorms. Bad ones, yes, but just thunderstorms. It happens many times a year, every year. I get it that American isn't responsible for the weather. But come on folks, when bad weather happens, how an airlines prepares before and reacts afterwards is how you can sort out good companies from bad. American is bad and getting worse...

Here are some examples of how American is failing us:

-American could offer a web-based rebooking service, like Southwest. They don't.
-American could institute a system where they rebook platinum and gold customers first. They don't.
-American could cultivate a contingent work force (retired travel agents) etc. that helps with rebookings when bad weather happens. They don't have this.
-American could put their customers first and offer rebooking with all carriers including Southwest and Jetblue, but it appears they don't. They seem to only offer rebookings on carriers they like.

I understand all airlines are making money hand over fist and are they running their planes at high utilization rates. This makes weather problems worse and the system much more fragile... basically there's not much spare capacity for rebooking. Are any of those mountains of cash that American is making going to improve the customer experience/system resiliency in times of bad weather? It doesn't seem so.

Thanks to all to who informed me that I shouldn't expect more than my 5000 miles and partial refund. I have to eat the $400 extra that it took me to get home on Southwest when American failed to get me home. That helps, and I will drop my further complaints.

However, I would encourage all of you frequent travel experts to hold American to a higher standard when dealing with these weather emergencies. Apparently, they won't get better unless we demand they get better...

869

I'm glad you've decided to move past this but wanted to point a few things out. Unclear to me why you spent 5 hours on the phone while at DFW. Could you not get to a human in less time at the airport? Ticket counters? Gate Agents? AC? The same in US Air terminal?

Speaking of an online rebooking tool, why didn't you jump on aa.com and book a refundable seat on the next available flight while you waited? AA would gladly refund that while moving your original res to the flight.

I think that I hold AA to a pretty high standard and do not hesitate to point out poor service as well as extraordinary service. However, lobbing in complaints and compensation demands related to weather delays is just a total waste of time. In fact, when I actually have a legitimate complaint to make I always first declare in my email or phone call that I am not seeking compensation. I really just want them to address the issue.

dbilling

Thanks 869, the idea of booking a refundable fare to get home and then transferring that to the rebook when you finally get through to an agent is the best idea I've heard yet. That may have helped immensely as I am sure rebook inventory dwindled immensely as I waited on hold.

Regarding your questions: I was not at the airport. I hadn't left my origination city yet when American informed me via txt that the flight was cancelled and their automatic rebook system failed to rebook me. The 5 hours on hold was over 3 calls, two of which the line went dead while waiting. Their phone system (or maybe the land line phone company?) booted me off 2 hrs in on one call, and after 50 mins on the other. The callback system (that would have let me not wait on hold) wasn't working. It just seems in this day and age waiting on a telephone on hold is not the best way to handle this problem... They could be soooo much better....

It does help to hear from the cool heads that you seasoned travelers have. Yet it still bothers me that what's good for American (fully utilized planes, massive profits) is bad for the passengers (little available space for rebooking). They win. We lose. At some point people will balk... when it takes several days to recover and get everyone home after a line of thunderstorms goes through DFW, which BTW happens all the time, something's very very wrong...

BStrauss3

There was no bookable inventory. The first thing they do in OSO situations is zero out the available-to-sell

As for the rest of it, I lived through those storms, I'm building an Ark. The lake levels are up 5-10 FEET in a few days.

if you don't like how airlines operate, get a few of your friends to chip in a billion bucks each and start your own. You'll be bankrupt in a year because you DON'T do those things we all hate.

There is near zero extra capacity built into the system. Why? Because passengers have proven they won't pay for it. We'll jump to another carrier for a $5 cheaper fare.

michelle227

Anytime an airline has severe weather operations at a hub, it is going to ripple for a few days. The weather in North Texas has been absolutely horrid...they have had it FAR worse than I have (north of Houston). We are just drowning...they got flattened.

But common sense ALSO says that Dallas is going to be a little more sensitive to such things when one considers the memory of Delta 191 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Air_Lines_Flight_191). Overview of that from the FAA if you are not a fan of wikipedia can be found at http://lessonslearned.faa.gov/ll_mai...=32&LLTypeID=2

Stripe

Probably wouldn't work. I tried that gambit on Sunday, albeit with an award reservation. I had booked a one-way SFO-DFW milesaver for my son on Sunday afternoon. Around 8:30 that morning AA cancelled it and all other SFO-DFW flights after Noon. The 11:55 was still running and showing 7's in all coach buckets. I called the EXP line to get him switched but was told that the wait would be 38 to 54 minutes. I then put an Anytime award on hold for him, hoping that they could just switch his original ticket over to that. No dice. When I finally got the call back (and after another 10 minute hold) the agent said she couldn't do it. At that point the flight was zeroed out. Best she could do was cancel the original award and ticket the new reservation with the higher miles. She also gave me a hard time about blocking the inventory, which was exactly what I wanted to do and was a good thing I did.

When I called the AAdvantage folks yesterday about that (and getting ORC for cancelled revenue flights my wife and I were on), the agent said he couldn't see enough info about the situation to refund the extra miles but suggested I write in, which I will do.

JohnnyRockets

You got 5000 miles from Act of God, you should be happy.

I don't think having status would change the fact that 400 flights need to be rebooked. There is finite number of seats on a plane and with people already booked on them so being full for the next few days is not unreasonable.

I think AA couldn't have handle this better given these circumstances (god).
Again, I would be very happy to get that much miles because of god.