MrAndy1369

I'm asking this as a long-time non-elite flyer with AA. I started flying with them in 2010, and back then, they were pretty good. Service was average, but planes were on time, and F meals (when I traveled in paid F) were decent. We all know about the F meal cutbacks, so I'm not going to focus on that here. However, since the merger, I've noticed a change, both personally and here on FT. There seems to be so much more complaints, more frustrations, and service seems much less... personalized?

Examples? Delays for seemingly no reason, more surly employees (at both pmUS/pmAA hubs), tighter IRROP policies (not including CLT, for example, but including RDU/GSO ), a more restrictive refund policy (the hold policy is generous, granted, but anything booked >7 days isn't refundable OR can be put on hold, vs. UA/DL, which offers a 24 hour refund regardless of the date of travel), Customer Relations no longer reachable via phone (unlike DL; UA has the same policy as AA), lousy F meal service/presentation, and just a generally less satisfied vibe from customers.

My question is: was pmAA always this bad? I traveled on pmUS more, and while their experience was nothing special or exciting, their employees were friendly for the most part, helpful, and delays were pretty rare. pmAA employees were a bit less friendly, but the experience just seemed more cohesive, more special, like more attention was put in it, if that makes any sense.

I recently had a cancelled flight due to weather, and sent in a complaint about luggage retrieval at DCA being delayed for 45 minutes without any reason, as well as lousy customer service. Got an obviously scripted response that didn't even address the luggage complaint, and didn't even seem to care. I remember pmAA AND pmUS being more thorough, even to this non-elite. The vibe I got was a flip one; I understand airlines cannot control weather, but the response could've been better, and they didn't even answer my question about the luggage delay.

Is it just my imagination, or is AA really going downhill? Trying to keep this as least hyperbolic as possible while remaining realistic.

bse118

YMMV as always.

In my 64 segments on AA/US in 2015 I experienced:

* 0 mechanical delays greater than 15 minutes.
* only 1 cancellation, due to weather, which was immediately rebooked at similar times via a different hub
* 1 two-hour arrival delay due to weather
* no baggage problems
*a reasonable domestic upgrade success rate as gold/plat for all of 2015
* generally friendly if unremarkable cabin crew

No meaningful complaints about AA's operations here.

taxicabnumber

OP's last part about the automated responses is what mainly irks me these days. Delays etc. happen. But when writing in, with pmUS I always got a human response, even if it was mostly just cut and paste. By contrast, it seems the new AA has not only resorted to automated responses, they've gone out of their way to find America's worst machine-learning students.

wrp96

No comments on your overall post, but they have expanded the waiver to include NY but not yet Charlotte. If you have flights you need to change, look to see if you can do so online - this is new for AA from previous years.

arlflyer

Well, passenger numbers are up, load factors are up, revenues are up, paid F bookings are up. Of course we don't have any proprietary internal information to substantiate this, but the aforementioned circumstantial evidence would give reason to suspect that, yes, perhaps the individual customer would not be shown as much personal attention as in 2010.

MrAndy1369

Yeah, I've edited my OP as such. When I wrote the post initially, NYC was not included with DCA/PHL in the waiver.

wrp96

Oh I was totally with you on that rant (flight to NY through CLT). I just wanted to make sure you were aware of the changed situation so you could at least get any flights switched, even if everything else isn't what it should be.

MiamiAirport Formerly NY George

The bottom line is that AA is pressured by Wall Street and the financial elite to perform better and better, meaning doing a lot more with a lot less. Even as an EXP if something happens IT IS UP TO YOU to find a remedy and practice the old "ask and you shall receive." Whenever I anticipate a delay I am on my laptop like a fly on caca looking for alternatives. Then depending on where I am, I approach an AC staff member or GA or call the EXP desk and politely ask about my researched options. Knowing these front line employees are stressed to the gills I try to take the stress out of the equation and profusely thank them for their assistance. I find it goes a long, long way. I remember last year desperately needing to get back to MIA when my DFW/MIA flight went mechanical. The actually got an AC staff member to route me DFW/LAX/MIA (redeye) all in F to get home by the next morning.

That is the state of Corporate USA and AA by no means is exempt. Forget about the surly employees and start doing for yourself because I can assure you this is the wave of the future for air travel, EXP be damned.

arollins

This is so true, newyorkgeorge (or should it be miamigeorge ) comments are to the point. This is not exclusively to AA, but customer service in general. I can speak in my own industry, contract logistics and international freight, we are asked to do so much with little or no spend. You can only spread your self so much. In the end, the customer needs to look out after itself. The days of follow up are long gone.

STG

I won't comment too much as I flew primarily pmUS, but in the last year I've had nothing but frustrations with the new AA. My wife and I (both AA Platinum) have only been able to get upgrades on a handful of domestic flights, and we've always been broken apart even though we're on the same itinerary (e.g. the system will assign one of us to 1A and the other to 3C, even though the rest of first class is empty - literal example from a TPA to PHL flight, but we've had similar experiences on all our upgrades). My interactions with AA customer service have also been horrendous. In college I worked in a call center, so I try to be especially nice to the CSRs on the phone. Even with that, they've denigrated any complaints that I have (normally by stating that AA is one of the best airlines in the world, so they have no idea why I'm having a problem with [award availability for instance - also a real example]).

pinniped

It seems like the merger was not handled well. IT problems were all over the place...it almost feels like they didn't bother QA testing the integration plans, knowing that the customers would call in and they'd figure out where the bugs were that way.

I had one itinerary problem in early '15: an itin that contained a mix of legacy US metal and AA metal. When the US flight time moved, neither US nor AA would allow me to reroute the itin. I tweeted, emailed, called multiple times. Often the initial AA rep would put in the request, saying it looks like a totally legal change due to a broken connection (very open flights, weeks before departure), but every time the "liaison" would reject it.

I eventually gave up, redeposited the awards, and booked totally different cities. It was clear that internal gamesmanship was in play - perhaps because of merger-related bitterness.

I had a few attempts to phone the call center last summer and ran into hours-long queues, even when there weren't any major IROPS events in the AA system. Fortunately nothing urgent, but it was clear that that entire process was completely broken. Reading FT, there were accounts of EXPs having to wait for callbacks. That should simply never happen.

Inflight has been fine. Airport ops have been fine (no real delays to speak of). I'll personally come out ahead when the merger dust settles, since my lifetime status is AA and I had no US status. More hubs, more flights, etc. to pick from. But wow, did they bungle this whole merger thing...

grahampros

Yes PRAA has been pretty bad for long time now. It's nothing new. Those that suck with them just got use to the steady decline. They were always cutting something to save some bucks and very unhappy staff. Let's hope they turn it around. More and more of my domestic business is now going to DL since they have their act together.

JonNYC

Funny the differeing perspectives on such things:

http://centreforaviation.com/analysi...ormance-260923

taxicabnumber

This is still my experience. I haven't, in probably six or seven months, been able to get straight through except if calling after 9PM Pacific. 10-20 minute callbacks galore...thank god for the Twitter team -- they're awesome -- but there are still some things the Twitter team can't do.

Pipe dream: AA's Twitter team gets empowered with a way to take payments (maybe they generate for you a secure link where you input CC info and then come back to Twitter) and put award reservations on hold, and I never have to call AA again except for maybe day-of-departure stuff.

MiamiAirport Formerly NY George

Lets face it EXP is becoming the new PLT. Fewer upgrades and more call backs from the EXP desk (which generally are called back fairly quickly). Maybe being CK still means personalized handling but for us EXP masses its more self serve. Get used to it.