Hoc

Well, my 73-year-old mother and a friend joined me on my trip to New York City this week. Today was our flight home. Due to her decision to accompany me several months after I had booked my flight, I had to book them on the 6 pm JFK-LAX return flight, though my return flight was at 2:30 pm. I got to the airport around 1 pm for my flight, and noticed that her flight had been cancelled.

So, I called to find out what they had done to her reservation. Let me re-iterate, she's 73, and needs a wheelchair. I found out that they had put her on a flight back for the following morning, and did not even bother contacting her. They said that they had no earlier or later availability today, and because she was traveling on an award ticket, she would have to find and pay for her own hotel room in New York City for the extra night tonight. With me gone, and the vacation over, she simply could not afford to shell out an extra $400 for that.

I shudder to think of what would have happened if I had not been flying out that morning, and she had just showed up at JFK at 4 pm, only to be told that she would not be leaving until the next morning, and good luck finding a place to sleep and a wheelchair for the night.

I was able to get her rebooked on the 5:40 pm flight out of Newark (traveling on an award ticket, so no transfer to another airline), after going through several layers of supervisors. I then called her cell and let her know that she would have to get to Newark, at the cost of an extra $39 in cab fare.

She finally made it to Newark early, and her flight was delayed due to mechanical troubles for an extra hour and a half. On the flight back, they served the "snack boxes," but the expiration dates on many of the foods in her box had passed. The box itself had a later expiration date, though the items inside were already expired.

When she finally got to LAX, there were no wheelchairs available, though it had been booked. In fact, there were four passengers on the flight who had to wait an extra hour after arrival for the wheelchairs to show up.

They showed up at my house, exhausted and drained.

The fact that the 6 pm flight was cancelled so far before the flight leads me to believe that AA cancelled it just because it was not full enough. Meanwhile, every other AA flight out of JFK today wound up full to the gills.

It irritates me to see this kind of lack of service for an elderly and infirm passenger. While these kinds of inconveniences happen occasionally, and I certainly can tolerate them, you would think that, when faced with an elderly passenger who needs wheelchair assistance, AA would at least make some effort not to force them to sleep in the airport overnight in the event of flight cancellations, and would have made some attempt to contact them, rather than just wait until they arrive at the airport.

The rest of the issues just make the AA experience a horrible one in this case.

party_boy

Something similar happened to my grandmother when she was 89, but I was able to persuade the GA to switch us, giving her my seat and I ended up taking the alternate convoluted route home.

As for the wheelchair, I have no clue about that, thankfully my grandmother can walk unassisted, but will have problems with luggage.

Lets say that I was pissed too.

olimaspecto

If it were me and I knew that my mother was elderly and needed special help I would have spent the extra miles and booked an F ticket. That doesnt excuse AAs behavior but at least it would have allievated some of the problems and may have even helped to get her on a flight from JFK.

MiamiBeach

Well, AA34 LAX-JFK was cancelled for "security reasons" on Sunday (see here) and that's very likely to be the plane for the 6pm JFK-LAX flight. They would have known about this cancellation about 6 hours before the 6pm flight so a lot of your speculation seems to be unfounded.

gemac

While I think that most of your complaints are justified and constitute very poor customer service by AA, if it had been my mother, and I knew she was having to go through this, I would have been at the airport gate with a wheelchair to meet her.

vasantn

Come on people, let's not jump on the OP with all the "if it had been my mother" scenarios without knowing all the facts. AA's behavior was inexcusable, pure and simple. I would write a letter and expect a sincere apology. As I have always said, an award ticket is a paid ticket.

jayer

And the reason you did not stay overnight yourself to assist if mom is that limited is?

Forget the name of the airline because it does not matter. Its fun to rant, but the margins are thin and and domestic is nothing but flying bus. Booked capacity is at record levels. So if she can't adapt to a schedule bust on her own; pay for a younger friend or relative to go along as her companion. Rebook yourself on the same plane so you can assist her. Don't book her at all into a tight travel day or tight market. But thinking its even possible for any airline to provide special favors when the seats are already gone is unrealistic.

andrzej

I don't think most of the critisism has anything to do with the ticket being an award or paid. That we agree upon. Either one should be treated equally. That said, I will agree with most others here. The OP made a lot of assumptions.

Also, If I were the OP, and had no choice but to book 2 separate flights for an elderly, infirmed mom, I would have taken a loss of a change fee and book myself on the same flight as hers. Maybe I'm just different that way.... The way it looks is that he was very comfortable leaving mom behind but now expects AA to bend over backwards with apology when something went wrong with scheduling. (and the assumption that AA cancelled the flight because of an empty plane is absurd). These planes fly back and forth all over the country/world. If AA started to cancel flights because of an empty planes imagine what all the schedules down the stream would start to look like? cancellations left and right. Crews deadheading, crews not at the right airports, etc...etc.. It just does not happen, because it does not make sense.

Is AA suppose to keep track of who everybody is? The new immigrant that does not speak English? the newbie flyer that does not know what an inside of the plane looks like? An infirmed mom? And if she has shown up at JFK, how do we know that the TA/GA would not take a special interest in her and help her through the mess? Again, a lot of assumptions by the OP.

I do agree that the wheelchair incident at the destination needs attention, but to be honest with you, I'm not sure if that's not somewhat exaggerated. I have not been on one AA flight that did not have wheelchair assistants waiting at the door and if they were short a wheelchair, I would always hear the GA use her walkie talkie to order some more and I'm usually the first one of the plane. Besides, the plane usually turns around in less than 1 hour, so I doubt they would have people sitting on it for an hour waiting for the wheelchair. If it happened it must have been a very rare occurance, and if it did, I doubt very much it took an hour to get wheelchairs there. As we all know on occasion everybody has a hiccup. None of us are perfect.

So I do agree that there were some possible minor service issues, but nothing of the magnitude the OP speaks of, and I know, I wasn't there, but I just have a hunch.

PresRDC

Airlines don't cancel flights for low bookings. This is among the biggest falsehoods perpetuated on FT.

JonNYC

It really is. I practically remember the thread that started this rumor.. and it just. never. went. away-- despite the efforts of people to correct the info.

FirstClsTrvlr

I guess I generally agree that we should not jump on the OP for the things he didn't do. It seems AA dropped the ball. However, because I frequently travel with or arrange travel for my 86yo grandmother who travels in a wheelchair, I agree with the theme of some comments. When she travels I leave nothing to chance.

I get there much earlier than I would if traveling alone. TSA is usually pretty good with her, but especially here in DEN, they can be abominable.

I look at flight status throughout the day so that if something happens, I freqntly know about it before they have a chance to call me - assuming they will call me.

I don't buy FC seats nor do I use miles to travel in FC - so neither does my grandmother - but I still expect reasonable service and to arrive at my destination.

When not traveling with her, I always arrange to be at the gate to meet her, or make sure that someone else will be. I promise my grandmother would not have been left waiting to 60 min for a wheelchair.

We actually have a compact type wheelchair that travels with her and she gate checks it. On more than one occasion, I have arrived at the gate to meet her with no one available to get her off the plane. I have had no trouble convincing the GA to let me go down to the plane to get her. I don't remember the cost of the chair, but it has simplified our lives considerably.

Instead of sitting in the AC and showing up at the gate just as boarding starts, we are always waiting at the gate and have introduced ourselves to the GA early. That way they can get us onboard in whatever way they need to - as unobtrusively as possible.

I share these thoughts not to point out what the OP should have done - but simply to share experiences with someone who may travel with a disabled person in the future. It can absolutely be done smoothly, but does take more attention than my typical trip.

IceTrojan

As much as I see the problems with AA in this situation, I REALLY WISH people would stop spewing this muck around.

DaxOmni

Hey, I know what we can do, let's all just blame the OP for making AAssumptions by making our own AAssumptions about what happened even though we weren't even there. Yeah, that'll do nicely. What is the point of protecting AA as though it were a helpless baby? AA can protect itself just fine as we've all seen over the years.

silverthief2

I assumed (lots of assumptions in this thread, I know) that this was the a/c's last flight for that day since it was scheduled to depart at 5:40 p.m. and supposedly didn't leave until about 90 minutes after that. If that was the case their arrival in LAX was probably after 10 p.m. Pacific time. Thus the a/c would be sitting at the gate for the evening. Of course I could be wrong, but that's a hunch.

acf573

While I believe this to be true, I believe that if an airline is having aircraft difficulties on a certain day (say they're short 3 planes due to mechanical difficulties), they'll cancel the flights with the lowest loads/easiest to reaccomodate. Which, of course, makes sense. But this can also give the impression that flights are just being canceled due to low loads if one is unaware of the overall situation.

For instance, my parents were flying CVG-BOS a few years back on DL on a moderately stormy day. The 1pm flight left on time, their flight with 15 booked passengers (the 2pm) was canceled due to "weather," and the 3pm flight (which they were put on) left on time. I would guess there were weather-related disruptions elsewhere in the system which led to a shortage of aircraft.