Piedmont767

Well hopefully, you'd be pleased to hear that the older concourse at CLT are going to be refurbished, AA gate areas are also to be refurbished, the Admirals Clubs are to be refurbished with showers likely installed at the C/D Club and a new club may be built on concourse E. Also (though I may be bias) I find that, for the most part, customer service is good here at CLT.

To the OP, if you go via Miami you may get a new 738 with AVOD but if you can find the A330 from Charlotte then I think you should take that.

iplaybass

I like DFW the best out of AA's hubs; unfortunately, both DFW and ORD are MUCH more expensive routings. Also working against ORD is that this is the middle of winter. Weather-related IRROPS could really kill our vacation cruise, and any rebooking would probably be in middle seats in the back of the plane.

Working against DFW is that it's a 12-hour trip. Leave STL at 9:30am, get into SJU at 9:01 pm. There's no same-day connection to the early DFW-SJU flight. So, my options are PHL, CLT, or MIA. I can probably handle MIA just because it's a domestic connection. After last year, no way would I use MIA as an entry point into the US again. Took almost 2 hours... WITH GE and pre-check.

Memo21

True on Miami, however, I have found coming from the islands, if you can get a flight timed when the South American flights are not coming in, you can get through fairly quick. It's the island flights that come in during the SA wide body inbound rush that will kill you.

I'd still pick any hub, most days, over CLT.

fastflyer

I would like to hear this story. Were the Global Entry kiosks disabled?

arlflyer

I can't say I agree with any of this! I've always found the US staff at CLT to be quite friendly; they have helped me out of some jams. The big club is older, yes, but it has all the same amenities as any other AC, and the concourses are compact and easy to navigate.

iplaybass

We landed last/next-to-last with a whole bunch of SA flights and had to wait before we could even get to the entry hallway. Add to that an agent who said that the center lane had to be kept clear for "crew only" and didn't want to respond to my GE question (1 hr). My wife finally found another agent who allowed her to retrieve me and we finally took the GE lane. half the GE terminals seemed to be OOO (10 mins wait), and we wound up going through the priority manual line (at shift change, 10 mins), and then into the cluster that is international baggage retrieval (15 mins to cross the line several times; people had the misperception that we were trying to cut in, not through, so it took 4 explanations in 3 different languages (ENG, ESP, FRA) to get across the snake. Then I had to dig my GE card out for the agent (my fault).

I wasn't in a good mood anyway, since one of my fellow J passengers had elbowed me in the chest to get by as the GA in SXM was carefully inspecting my BP to make sure I wasn't just another misguided tourist trying to get on the plane early. He just said "I'm in business class," threw the elbow, and breezed past.

I would do MIA ex-US, but never again as my entry point unless I have a 5 hour layover.

arlflyer

I just can't agree with this enough.