AANYC1981

Just had a non-status good friend go through the ORD debacle a couple of days ago and she's just getting back to DC this afternoon via PHL and then train down to DC. So happy I was not flying on AA this past week.

ty97

I'm happy in general that i wasn't flying the 26th-28th on anyone. United and Southwest had an awful time of it too with the storms hitting Houston and ice/snow/wind hitting Chicago. (Anytime during that period you could search Twitter and find '[Airline] is the worst, I'm never flying them again! [Other airline] never did this to me!" about any of American, United, Southwest simultaneously

Looks like Delta made out the best (this time) based on luck of the geographical/weather draw.

AANYC1981

Yep, I was on DL, but flew via DTW which I thought would be impacted....but everything was ontime and smooth

qukslvr619

First experience dealing with AA irrops as a Plat and have to say was pretty disappointed.

Understand lots of bad weather going on, but CLT was a mess and witnessed just a complete meltdown on every scale. The usual GAs disappearing while flt was delayed only to come out 10 mins before boarding and deal with a line 20 pax deep. I was trying to get protected on a later DFWIAH flt since it was pretty obvious I was going to misconduct and was told by an agent that they don't do that you'll just have to deal with it in DFW....so yeah let me wait three hours till I get there when everything at that point is sold out and the earliest I would be able to get there is 5pm tom.

Calls to Plat desk were met with "oh you'll make it" even though the inbound hadn't even arrived and "the agents in CLT can protect you but we can't".

MIA-SAT

Based on what AA did yesterday, I think the definition of weather problems has been stretched. Yesterday at 1:00 pm ,AA cancelled my 5:40am DSM-DFW departure for today. Called EXP line and was told that it was a weather issue, 16+ hours before departure. Huh, no bad weather yesterday between these cities and certainly none today. Proactive use of the AA website and of Expert Flyer, allowed me to find and snag an F seat, last seat in inventory, out of DSM to DFW this afternoon, although I had to change my final destination to AUS. Agent told me there were no seats to SAT, period, until 1-1.

Thanks to JDiver for the suggestion of Tripit, I just subscribed for one year just to have more IRROPS backup.

1K-SFO

See my post up-thread about the fluidity of inventory. At the moment the agent was looking, there may not have been any seats to sell, but as I look at EF now, there are plenty of open seats today (12/30) DFW-SAT and tomorrow similarly has plenty of open seats.

And, even if there had not been any seats to sell/confirm, you'd probably do fine on standby at the gate... indeed, when you get to DFW from DSM, you should definitely try standby to SAT -- you'll likely do just fine.

Geauxtigers

Bolding this because I witnessed it firsthand today. PHL-CLT showed Y0 for almost every flight, went standby on the 10am and cleared along with 20 other standby passengers. Same thing with CLT-BTR. Y0 all day until 2 hours prior, then went to Y2 and even E1, then back to Y0 real quick. Cleared standby for that as well, about 5 empty seats.

This leads me to believe AA is proactively zeroing out flights after irrops, which can be a good and bad thing. Easiest way to get on the flights you want are expertflyer alerts for F1/Y1 or put yourself on the standby list early online

MrAndy1369

An update:

My newly rebooked SMF-PHX-DCA flights went pretty well. SMF-PHX arrived early; PHX-DCA was slightly delayed for about an hour. Frustrating, but not the end of the world. Baggage claim at DCA was, however, a nightmare... almost an hour wait at the carousel until the thing finally began moving!

Relatively speaking, it wasn't that bad; it could've been much worse.

HNL

Glad you made it to DC. Sadly the lengthy delays at baggage claim in DCA seems to be a more common appearance these days.While not stellar, the performance of LAA was much better than what we experience these days.

AANYC1981

Was CLT really that bad yesterday? I had a bunch of friends that missed connections there yesterday but all it looked like was rain from the TVs at LGA. Another easy trip on Delta LGA-RIC though yesterday despite very low ceilings in Richmond.

raiz

Rough travel day could use some advice.

Family of 4 travelling in paid F JFK-LAX-DEN. Wheels down in LAX right on time but sit on the tarmac over an hour due to occupied gate. 35 minute connection comes and goes and miss the last flight of the to DEN

Finally make it to gate 1:15 late. Head to admirals club and rebooked for the following morning to ASE (Aspen) which is where we are ultimately heading. Given two hotel vouchers. Arrive at the hotel only to find the hotel has one room left. They advise to head back to airport to resolve with AA. At this point I put my foot down and they manage to find two rooms at another nearby hotel. Uber it and finally arrive just past midnight (2 hrs after gate arrival).

Well the LAX-ASE flight now shows delayed from 9:10am to 2pm arriving at 5pm. Starting to get concerned fight may get cancelled. we are staying at the st Regis (on points) and ski plans (lift tickets / lessons) are non refundable.

don't see a viable back up plan at this point so I'm reaching out to the collective wisdom here.

PS bags were supposedly re-tagged to ASE but my understanding is they had already been sent to the carousel and were to be collected by AA staff. Doesn't sound reassuring.

tom911

Might be cutting it close, but there are 3 coach seats for sale on the 8:35am LAX-DFW connecting to the 5pm DFW-ASE. There's also 1 seat for sale on the 9:35 or 10:45 departure with the same connection to ASE. UA has a a few options as the day goes on from LAX.

AAEmpireState

CLT was indeed a mess - apparently thunderstorms and lightning resulted in multiple runway closures throughout the morning and early afternoon. And I agree that it appears that AA proactively zeroed out many flights, to handle the situation.

The agents I encountered at CLT were consistently calm and cheerful, and I thankfully did not encounter any cancellations or significant delays.

But here's what I don't understand - the (very friendly) gate agent processed my husband's and my upgrade on our CLT-LGA flight, but only after I asked, based on my review of EF (4 empty seats in F). But Y was fully booked, with dozens of people on the waitlist. #3 on the UG list was never upgraded, and we departed the gate with 2 empty seats in F.

poindexter6

It seems like I've got really bad luck. My flights have been canceled (two in a row now) and my only options they're giving me are to continue to wait more days. They offered a measly $300 voucher and said that's all they could do.

Any sense of how hard it would be to be reimbursed through corporate for any of the following:
* Cab fair to much further airport?
* Additional reimbursement for canceling and rebooking on non partner airline (Jet blue can get me home today)
* Higher than $300 voucher for making me 3 days late to my destination?

I'd hate to make some extreme changes just to get home and if there is no chance of me getting reimbursed, and I figure the experts could weigh in here.

More details:

original flight was PBI -> DCA arriving 1/1 @10pm. This was canceled.
rebooked on PBI -> DCA arriving 1/2 @ 7am. This was canceled.
rebooked on MIA -> DCA arriving 1/3 @ 11pm. *crossing my fingers on this one*

Austin787

Yesterday, my parents and me had a delay (of almost 2 hours), that was clearly the result of poor planning on AA's part.

After flying AA113 BCN-MIA, we had connection on AA2424 MIA-AUS. Scheduled to depart at 9:29 pm Eastern time.
1) Original gate, D44, for AA2424 was occupied by a broken down airplane flying to DFW, forcing the airplane for AA2424 to remain parked on the tarmac. Seriously, not one open gate at a major hub airport? Why not push the broken plane out to a holding area to be worked on, so the airplane for AA2424 can park at gate D44?
2) New gate, D28, assigned for AA2424, after boarding was scheduled to begin. Airplane for AA2424 parked at the gate around 9:20pm.
3) Agent announced they were short 1 crew member for AA2424, and would bring an additional crew from another flight. Seriously, AA failed to notice the missing crew member until boarding was about to start?
4) The agent announced the new crew member arrived from her other flight at gate D21, around 10:03 pm.
5) The crew member finally showed up at gate D28 around 10:34pm. Why would it take her half an hour to go from D21 to D28? I can walk it in less than 5 minutes. Also, I noticed she came from the opposite side of the terminal and not from the side where D21 is located, which makes me wonder if she really tried to rush to D28.
6) Started boarding around 10:35pm.
7) Around 11:15pm, pilot announces ground crew were still loading luggage. The plane had been parked at the gate for 2 hours by now. In my experience, it doesn't take 2 hours to unload luggage from the previous flight and load luggage for the next flight.
8) Pushed back at 11:21pm, arrived Austin 1:26 am central time.

If AA had planned properly, MIA-AUS flight would have been on time. We had a long day of travel, starting in Barcelona, Spain. We were tired. Very inconvenient for us. I also complained to AA customer service.