JDiver

Even the PSS system seems mostly OK. Had to refresh a few times to see trips, I hate the current itinerary simplicity mode, but Friday I took advantage of the amazing sale last week and booked trips for next year - easily done, ticketed within the hour. ^

Maya Leibman may be getting a tiara for this one.

MarkedMan

They did what they said they would do: moved flights from the smaller system to the bigger system, period.

Most of the mergers we have discussed as being flawed from an IT standpoint involved a de facto roll-out of a brand new system (small system with a ton of changes made to it to somehow "catch up"). And while there have been some changes made to AA over the last year or so, and some issues associated with that, it's minor and incremental, not big bang.

It's been great to see from a customer perspective. From my experience this doesn't mean there isn't some concern internally about the change, but what they've done is protect the customer and that's a real achievement. UA/CO managed the singular feat of %$&&$#( off both its customers and employees in one fell swoop

ashill

Yup. But they deserve serious kudos for designing a transition that avoided a roll-out of a brand new system. Experience certainly tells me that simply doing what you say you're going to do with a major IT transition is a major feat. The fact that they (seem to have) succeeded by making it easy on themselves earns them more respect than they would have gotten by successfully pulling off a UA/CO or HP/US-style major day zero rollout.

JDiver

Slightly off topic, but related, the stats for the forum here and where we came from (snapshot at 09:00 Pacific):

IMO, our members have contributed a lot: tons of knowledge, experiences, searching and making use of existing resources before starting duplicate threads, treating each other respectfully, refraining from ranting about the changes that have been imposed upon all of us and blaming each other, and being flexible about the changes we had to implement on FT to match what the airlines were doing.

I hoped and expected that, but seeing how other mergers have affected some, wasn't counting on it. We're all veterans now, whether it was HP-US, AA-TW, or this big one, US-AA.

So, here we are - again, welcome to the now finally named American Airlines | AAdvantage forum, and I'm very glad it has gone so easily with everyone's participation and support. ^

Carl

Not sure if this is the right thread for this, so apologies if it has to be moved.

One of the changes to which I've looked most forward was the demise of the horrible US app and sluggish mobile check-in procedures. This included an airport I frequent which US claimed was incompatible with mobile boarding passes (even though it clearly has worked fine for other carriers here for years). I chalked this up to US not making even minor fixes to their problematic IT infrastructure ever since the merger was announced.

Well, today I went to check in for my AA (former US) flight, and the app told me (after checking me in) that I can't use a mobile boarding pass here and have to get one from an AAgent, kiosk, or print from aa.com. Grrr. Ok, fine, this one slipped through the cracks. Curses.

All of the workers here are employed by Envoy (even ones that serve UA), and they are about as unhelpful as any you may ever experience. They refuse to print BP for anyone, claiming that they've been told everyone must use the kiosks, no exceptions. So if you arrive and see a person at the counter doing absolutely nothing, and a line of ploddingly-slow people at the kiosks, you get told they can't help you do anything. Good times. (Not so much.)

Having learned that lesson before, I went to aa.com to print my BP, and was told, "Please check in at the airport. We’re unable to check you in online." Now, just below that statement, it shows "Already checked in" in green, and I get that message simply by choosing "Get boarding pass >>"

As an aside, I'm sick and tired of being told, "This feature is temporarily unavailable. We apologize for this inconvenience. Please try again later." when selecting My trips / Check-in from the aa.com homepage. I'm sorry, but that's been broken for months, and that's absolutely unacceptable. Yes, I know I can just click on AAdvantage and then My Trips, but why must I?

On the positive side, upgrades for both of my flights tomorrow actually cleared 72 hours in advance (still no email or other notification; I just checked on my own). This is the first time I've ever had that feature work properly. On my last flight from ATL to DFW, the system was showing 9 available F seats a few hours in advance, but I still didn't clear until boarding time (even the AC AAgent couldn't do it sooner than that).

Hopefully the other kinks will iron themselves out very soon.

bakster21

+1

GrjApp

Not sure if others have come across this, but:
- CP certificate applied to outbound back when booked
- After reticketing on AA for draindown, unable to access reservation while logged in, but ok while not logged in.
- Nobody ever sees anything wrong with it.
- Unable to check in online --> after entering passport info (which is in fact in the record already but getting ignored), it just cycles back to the check-in screen
-First told "schedule change" so mismatch - not true.
- Then told, by EXP agent no less, "because your return flight is SWU waitlisted still, you can't do OLCI for outbound" (Really?? Then I guess I was lucky some other times when I was able to do just that)
- After they keep passing me back and forth between reservations and yet another web support rep, I actually get one (#3) who after a while finally sees something - the CP certificate is apparently looking like waitlisted but has me in J so the whole outbound flight is mismatched re class of service and seat.

So that is probably why it's acting up at OLCI.
Sadly that means checking in at airport, what a waste of time.

Workaround: originally when trying to check in at T23, app didn't even display option for OLCI. Fast forward a few hours and noticed the app now shows Check-in option - and it worked. (Why is the app late with making OLCI available?)

After that, aa.com was able to pull up BPs in order to print (is there no option from app to also print/email?) Interestingly, when trying to do this from an iPad, it errored out but did not actually show any error messages. Trying from a laptop revealed that the email field was blank - which is par for the course for AA and US dropping info between reservations even before Oct 17, my email and phone never made it across from AA to US when flying AA ticketed US flights.

LowlyDLsilver

An update from my mini-rant about web services and the BS reply I got.

Have checked several days and several cities, and it seems that any PSA CR7 flight out of CLT I looked at, the seatmap will not load.

Frankly, I don't want to put myself through another call to web services - If there's anyone official from AA here, or if the mods have a contact, can someone look into this?

LowlyDLsilver

Add: it only affects LUS flights, checked some LAA flights out of ORD and they load correctly - different regional.

dml105

YES. I am having the exact same issues, up to the point where you discuss checking in, as my flights do not depart until late December. I have been unable to access my reservation while logged in. When I call, they say the reservation is fine. I have seat assignments in J and everything. Sometimes the app loads the reservation, but the web will only intermittently load the reservation if I am logged out and manually enter the confirmation number.

This scares me. But it looks like your resolution was simply to wait until a few hours before your flight, and then check in.

I may have to check in at the airport anyway because I plan to ask them to interline my luggage through to a BA flight upon arriving at LHR.

GrjApp

The only OLCI I could do was via the app, not aa.com. But that at least got aa.com to realize there is a BP to print, which I was then able to do. Another oddity - said BP printed the 037 ticket# on the BP. Took my chances and got thru security without issue and had the lounge reprint the BP - which then showed the 001 ticket#. Clearly some draindown tickets didn't quite get all the details transferred right but in the end it seems to work ok.

Rebob

I had two flights this week, one Sunday morning (18th) and one Friday (23rd). The only issue I had was a TSA precheck line that was longer and slower than the regular line at ORD. Got upgrades between 36 and 6 hrs in advance so the whole change over was pretty much a non-event for me. Kudos to the consolidation teams!

rpjepson

Flew MAN-PHL recently.

Called AA to get an upgrade with miles/co-pay.

First call - The agent types away, declares herself 'confused' and then says I'll have to sort it out at the airport.

I go into my booking, and I'm now in J, though no miles deducted and no payment had been taken.

Second call - I call to ask what has happened. The agent this time takes payment, saying she had to 'fool the computer into thinking we're in London.'

I check my booking, the miles have been deducted.

I arrive at MAN on the day of departure, to be told payment hadn't been taken, nor miles deducted (even though I can see the miles have gone.)

I paid again, though am a bit wary I've paid twice. Will have to check that when I get home.

Is it always this tricky to give AA money?

bchandler02

No, it isn't that hard. I do miles+copay fairly often, and it works well.

When you were moved up to J, did it show ticketed, or ticket pending? If it said ticketed, I would have left it at that. May have been a glitch for a free upgrade.

JDiver

It sounds like you got recently cross-trained agents who were confused; it's normally much simpler than this.