AA's atrocious mobile app
 

Since I have lifetime Gold status on UA (with 1.5mm), I decided this year to build up Platinum level on AA (which I will have in a couple months, have Gold now), that way I can fly the rest of the year choosing the best route via either AA or UA.

Of the many inferior things about AA compared to UA (like the lack of Main Extra seats on all the old US Scare Airbuses), the absolute worst is the atrocious moble app. The United app is so good, I can almost instantly tell seat loading, status of incoming flights, you name it. The AA app is so bad, the formatting doesn't even work, the info is almost always wrong, it is slow to load, you cannot tell anything about upgrade situation, etc. How can two competing companies have such a gap? The AA website is also pretty bad too, but not as horrible as the mobile app.

However, the worst is the problem I have seen twice in the last week. Get all the way up to the TSA Precheck desk, and the TSA scanner wont read the bar code. I get the three beeps, so it recognizes me as eligible for Precheck, but won't recognize the bar code. I have to then go back and get a paper ticket. (for grins, I boarded that flight with the mobile app, so the problem seems to be between AA and the TSA, not the barcode itself)

So today I call the AA help desk, the nice lady says this is a widespread problem and they are working on it. She advise me to NOT use the mobile app for now, to print all tickets for now. She also said they have a huge number of complaints with the sorry state of both the mobile app and the website, and are trying their hardest to catch up to United.

I wonder how long it will take AA to get even close to United on the mobile app?

Welcome to FlyerTalk.

As you'll see here, the A319s are being redone with MCE, as are some other aircraft.

Which mobile app are you using? The iPhone app revision is pretty comprehensive and is at least in Beta. Track baggage, follow upgrade list (once it's under airport control, iirc), etc.

I have not experienced any of the issues you're describing, using the Android version of the app. Are you on Android or iOS?

Android?

I don't have any real trouble with AA's iPhone app.

At least twice a week, I check-in online, add the boarding pass to passbook (now called Wallet I think) and then use the pre-check lines and e-gate readers and never have a problem.

I don't think this is a systematic but perhaps something with your account or maybe you are doing something incorrect?


As others have suggested ... how are you generating your BP? If its in the app or via passbook/wallet you shouldn't have a problem. I've seen people try to open the email bp and then enlarge it so it can be scanned and that never seems to work well.

I believe this is intentional.

Likewise, I use the AA app on my iPod and it's flawless. I have never had any issues with boarding passes, especially when using the passbook / wallet feature. I can see who has beaten me to an upgrade, check inbound flights etc. All in all it does pretty much what it says on the tin!

I have also been able to tell incoming flight information at the bottom of the screen when viewing the flight information. It works great when you are at an out station and the incoming flights in going to be very late...

The AA app on my iPhone remains an inferior product to that of DL or UA. I kept telling myself to be patient and that post merger completion, it would be better. Still waiting.

AAs App is basic (the only really useful feature is seeing where your inbound flight is coming from and the UPG list at T-4 hours)...when you look at what United is doing it pales in comparison.

I agree with the OP that UA's app is a much better one -- loads more functionality and acts like an app rather than AA's, which is really just a glorified mobile-optimized website.

AA should be ashamed of their app.

That said, what they do have is functional, as limited as it may be. I have never experienced the barcode issue with my Android, and the AA app does what they say it will.

@:-)Barcode scanning issues can often be resolved by temporarily increasing the screen brightness to full. After scanning, put it back to Auto mode.

I've never had the issues you're referring to, including last Thursday. However, if you're using Android, they recently rolled out an update on the Samsung Verizon phones. I wonder if the AA app was not upgraded yet, but your phone was upgraded and that caused a problem.

At the same time though, I think AA's app is embarrassing as well (in the features it offers). E.g. making you load up the website on the phone to change seats before checking in is an hilarious problem. But in terms of the features it does offer, I have not noticed problems.

Totally agree. The one thing UA has done better than a lot of airlines is mobile app capabilities. And I don't give props to UA often. Very user friendly app when it comes to anything you might need to do day-of or within a few days of traveling. Things such as changing flights, seats, upgrade list, track aircraft routes/status, etc. are all much easier on UA. They used to list the baggage claim which was nice, but that got taken off. One nice addition would be baggage tracking.

Husband uses Apple, I use Android, both of us have no issues with the basic functionality, but no, it is not great.