ubernostrum

Does AA's inability to count from 1 qualify here? It put me in the awkward situation of accidentally stealing someone's seat Thursday (I was assigned 4F on a 738, sat down in fourth row, and had to be reminded that "row 4" is not the fourth row on AA).

aamilesslave

I'm thrown off when I'm on an Airbus and F starts at row 1 instead of row 3.

MiamiAirport Formerly NY George

LAA started seating in its 738 and MD80s with row 3, the 767 start with row 2. 738s and MD80s have closet space up front that LUS a/c do not and therefore why seats start at row 3. LAA 321, 319, 777 start with rows 1. Whether AA will eventually harmonize seating is questionable. I can understand how it LUS flyers get confused.

wetrat0

Two points on WN:

First, WN separates what other airlines call a "gate agent" into two jobs: "customer service" and "operations". The CS agent sits at the desk (usually 1 agent for 2 gates or so) while the operations agent takes the boarding passes. The operations agent has literally one job, which is to do the boarding in an orderly manner. I think this helps maintain the boarding order a lot because they are not distracted by other things.

Second, WN makes it stupidly obvious what the boarding order is supposed to be. Everyone has not only a group/zone (the letter) but a specific place in line. There are stanchions indicating where to stand. There are flashing TV screens saying things like "Now boarding A31-A60".

As a result, someone trying to cut in line on WN would be blindingly obvious not only to the ops agent but to all the other passengers (and I have seen/been a part of a group of passengers that "shamed" a line-cutter out of the line).

On the other hand, AA/UA/DL gate agents have to process upgrades and standbys, make announcements, take all manner of miscellaneous questions, and gate check bags, during the boarding. Enforcing the boarding order is just not the most important thing they're doing. Moreover, they have intentionally confusing "group/zone" designations-- group 2 doesn't board second, for instance. So you have a combination of clueless passengers (who really think that their group 2 boarding pass means they should stand near the door because they're going to board toward the beginning) and the sneakers (who take advantage of the chaos to cut in line knowing the chance of being enforced is slim).

Perhaps if AA took a lesson from WN they would have a separate person to take the boarding passes at each gate. However, solving the second problem is much harder. There's no "queueing up" culture anywhere but WN, and AA has invested so much in selling priority (and giving it to elites) that there's no way they would renumber PriorityAAccess as "group 4", which is what it really is in https://www.aa.com/i18n/urls/boarding.jsp

nrr

On nearly every flight I've flown on AA, there are 2 agents at the podium; once boarding begins, one of them deals with actual boarding issues [calling groups and scanning bps], while the other agent deals with standbys, upgrades etc.
PS: In LAS, for many of the D gates, the actual boarding door, is NOT in close proximity to the podium serving that gate.

ijgordon

I think that qualifies as a folly. I'm so used to finding idiots who can't read a boarding pass and placard sitting in my assigned seat. Of course, on my last AA flight (I suppose it had been a while since I'd been in AA F on a 738) there's an older gentleman sitting in my seat, next to what appeared to be his wife. Naturally, I assumed he just took my seat to be next to his wife, but the surprise was on me when *I* was trying to go to the wrong seat (I was actually in the bulkhead row 3).
Fortunately, the kinder, gentler ijgordon was not rude and did not make a scene, and realized relatively quickly that I was in the wrong...
(And then on the return flight, I cheerily made three consecutive seat swaps (aka airline seat Tetris) to get families/couples seated together. Didn't want to mess with karma. And it was a 75L with no meal choice, so any seat but 4B/E next to the lav would have been fine).

dll

I've given up on caring about so-called 'gate lice.' It's a problem that is much bigger than AA. Indeed, the ONLY domestic carrier that I've flown where it is not an issue is WN, but I'm not going to be shifting any business to them. If you want to see a bad gate lice situation, fly UA. It's utter mayhem.

I just take the zen approach. All of us will get there. I have witnessed on my last 5 roundtrips on AA (all within the last month, including this week) that the FA's seem to be trying so much harder than I ever remember to help get the flight out on time by proactively shuffling bags around.

There are so many other things to care about, my main concern is getting to my destination.

My F trips in the last 5 weeks have been at the edge of outstanding. I don't know if it's luck, my outlook on life or an actual change. Something seems to be happening for the better at AA, at least on board.

BSBD

Yeah, other than the prison-grey interiors on the refurbs, and the dirty, ancient LUS planes, it's great!







Attitudes of FAs seem to have improved lately.

grapkoski

Dirty, ancient LUS planes? AA's earlier 738s are pretty disgusting. Heck even the newer 738s with BSI, but not AVOD look dated.

ty97

(I'm not intending to take a pmAA or pmUS side here, there are pros and cons to both halves of the operation, but I'm confused by the ancient pmUS plane reference)

The vast majority of the domestic pmUS fleet is A319 and A321. The oldest pmUS A319 was delivered in 1998 and the newest in 2006. And as you refer to, they been refurbed (albeit with a look one may not much care for).

The oldest pmUS A321 was delivered in 2001 and new pmUS A321 orders were arriving even after the AA/US merger took effect. US tail number A321s came on property as recently as 2015. (That order is now complete and all remaining 321 orders will be pmAA side)

pmAA's oldest 738s date to 1999 and the newest to this year, as they keep coming, but the oldest of each of these three three sub-fleets are relatively the same age. I've seen some well kept and some slightly ragged examples in the older of each type but nothing that suggests to me that the pmUS planes are any worse off (cleanliness and age wise) on average. And the pmUS planes certainly aren't ancient compared to a whole lot of similarly aged planes in the pmAA fleet.

cmd320

I hate this as well. I also hate AA's inability to correctly letter rows laterally. On a 1-2-1 international aircraft, I don't understand why it has to go A/D/G/J. The simplest way of doing things is just to go A/B/C/D and avoid this mess. Similarly on a domestic 2x2 aircraft I don't know why it can't just go A-D as well. There's too many planes flying around that go AC/DF or AB/EF. Complete mess.

swajames

I have to say the boarding process on my numerous UA flights this year (all in F) has been much better than on AA, and, if I'm being honest, so has the on board service....

fastflyer

I haven't yet flown UA this year, but last year at O'Hare they were trying to sort the boarding at UA gates into long queues by zone. Only Delta and AA in my experience, leave the boarding process entirely to "self-selection" where passengers choose when to approach the gate.

As mentioned upthread, I would like AA to consider the approach of some of the EU airlines, where a queue for First and priority pax is formed before boarding begins, and the boarding credentials are manually verified by a gate agent while the pax are still in the queue. Perhaps this could be introduced as needed to the most lice-infested airports.

rjw242

There's actually some logic to this -- the same seat "type" is in theory given the same letter across widebody aircraft. In your example, I know without checking that A/J are window seats and D/G are center-aisle seats. Of course even AA isn't entirely consistent about this (LUS A330s are lettered differently, for instance), which kind of defeats the purpose.

But if this really bothers you, stay away from LAN -- you might end up in 12L on an A319

akcae

Yeah, I can almost live with this, as long as it's CONSISTENT across the fleet, which it isn't.

The whole row 3 being the first row in First tho....