MiamiAirport Formerly NY George

If you are a regular FT than you know this is a common theme about AA and where in particular other airlines do a much better job. It's been this way for years and senior management doesn't appear all that concerned about being in the bottom of the barrel in KPIs. Given AA's lackluster financial performance compared to it's peers and considering AA only makes money on the credit card side you'd think the BOD would be looking for new leadership. I often feel sorry for the customer interfacing employees that try their best only to be worn down by less than stellar operations.

enviroian

Every week

tomj888

I've noticed is as well. I fly 100-120K a year. It just "feels" particularly bad this year out of LAX. Maybe I'm just being emotional

Often1

Worse is the situation when a carrier posts a 60-minute delay and then repurposes another crew to your flight and the 60 minutes drops to 0 while you are off getting a snack. People rant about that as well.

Other than at small outstations where the aircraft and crew can't possibly be swapped, there is a tradeoff.

AAMCI

If you have an expertflyer.com account, you can search for flight status by flight number, you'll see "View Additional Comments" and see something similar to this delayed flight (example AA2404 DFW-AUS delayed due to maintenance, originally scheduled to depart at 12:56PM, now estimated to depart at 1:30PM). This information is updated realtime by flight operations, so you'll know the specific reason for the flight delay and the estimated departure time.

Comments:
DFW 1256P A A14
AUS 3 1 24 156P 245P 1 24
DFW C4 C C6 354P
3DFW/ETD1330 MTR-DELAY DUE TO A/C MAINTENANCE *1314
2AUS/PRE1429 *1314

RogerD408

Be careful using updated information. The rules are you must be ready to board PRIOR to original departure time regardless any updated times or risk being offloaded. As stated above, if you are at a hub, they may sub in a different plane/crew and put the flight back on schedule. It's not like the railroads that honor any adjusted times. Some have been left behind because they were able to get the flight out earlier than the updated time and did so. You can play the SDFC game and get rebooked to a flight scheduled to leave later and should you make it to the airport in time for your original flight you might be able to move back. It's a juggling act no matter what.

genotonda

Had a fun one the other night. I was flying SAN-PHX-SLC. I was on the ~7:30pm SAN-PHX, and while I was at the airport, I ran into some folks who were to be on the ~4:45pm SAN-PHX. It was MX and set to be about (at the time) 1-1.5 hours late. I fly my SAN-PHX flight, that had a 35 or 40 min connection time, but I wasn't sweating it, as I was landing at A3 and PHX-SLC was going out of A6. I walk to A6, still have 15min until boarding even starts. Boarding begins, I am first one in line, scan my BP, system beeps, displays the "minimum crew not met" message. I have seen this before, and they generally click a few buttons to essentially "check-in" the crew. GA starts to do just that, but when he gets to the pilots, he notices they are not accounted for. He and the other GA are perplexed. After digging a little bit, they realize the pilots are also the pilots that are flying the delayed SAN-PHX, that hasn't even taken off yet! At this point it is about 7pm, that flight should've landed before 4pm. GA discovers that they won't even take off for about another hour, plus the hour flight time, so we are looking at about a 2 hour delay. What amazes me is that AA had 3+ hours to realize that the pilots weren't going to be there on time, and not only that, it STILL wasn't communicated to anyone by the time boarding was to start. Of course, the flight still showed as "on time" until about an hour past the originally scheduled departure.

Long story longer, my next worry of course is that some crew will time-out and we'll be stuck in PHX. The pilots finally arrive and the GA tells us that they agreed to extend their day and fly us to SLC, which was very nice of them. I don't know if they had the option to say, no, or something, but I assume they were still legal by FAA standards. Finally arrived in SLC at 1:40am local time.

IAHtraveler

Boarded my noon transcon today on time. Closed the door on time and the pilot immediately states that we have a wheels-up time of 1PM but "that's better than it was 20 minutes ago when we had a 230pm time." If they knew the delay prior to boarding, let us know so we can look at alternate arrangements instead of missing my connection now that it's too late to swap flights.

CMK10

Earlier this week my CLT-ATL flight was delayed due to maintenance. We were told they would have to shut down power to the plane to fix the problem and it would be at least 30 minutes before they could turn the power back on, we were sitting around the gate area mind you. AA then posted a 25 minute delay which they then extended by 20 minute increments

SOBE ER DOC

All of this sounds like just another day in AA paradise. I got stuck in the joy of DFW yesterday. Original departure was 7:02pm:

At 6:50pm flight delayed to 7:20pm. Earlier flight still at gate awaiting inbound crew not landing until 7:30pm. Our plane waiting on tarmac
20 min later...flight delayed to 7:40pm. Plane still on tarmac.
20 min later...flight delayed to 8:00pm. Plane still on tarmac.
20 min later...flight delayed to 8:20pm and new gate finally assigned.
At 8:33pm...flight delayed to 8:40pm.
Actual departure time: 8:56pm.

Of course, on Flight Aware the flight was posted as a delay four hours prior to departure. AA waited to post the delay until 30 min prior to departure. To add insult to injury, the FAs were whining during boarding about how tired they were.

I get delays happen but what chaps my a@@ is how disrespectful AA is in managing the situation. ALL of this was foreseeable. I could have remained in the AC doing work. Instead, I am forced to stay at the gate during the rolling delays, unproductive and festering about AA's ineptitude. I'm left with the realization that they just do not care about how much they inconvenience their passengers. In fact, they don't care about much of anything.

damon88

We used to fly AA a lot but it has been a few years. Never experienced this ridiculous “rolling delay” before.

No other airline I’ve flown plays this game.

It’s been 4 hours of false updates and they have finally posted a new scheduled departure 8 hours later than we were supposed to fly out.

Why do I not feel confident?

enviroian

is it wx or mx?

What is the flight?

Sorry to hear. I've been there as well as many others.

Get ready for the delay , er I mean, snack cart to be rolled out.

mvoight

It could be worse, at least it's not a MAX
My experience last Sunday for a MIA-DFW flight
1. Everyone lined up and the board ticks down to "1 minute until boarding" (At that point I had no realized the incoming flight had not yet deboarded.)
2. Board suddenly changes to "15 minutes until boarding", a short time later people start coming out from the incoming flight
Yeah, like AA can actually do a 15 minute turn around.
3. Board adds 20 more minutes.............and eventually we board.
At least the FA handed out free earphones for the seatback video (A321)
1. USB power did not work, so not able to charge phone
2. Kept interrupting movie with announcements.
Why in the hell does AA need to interrupt my movie to tell me the plane has movies?
Why in the hell does AA need to interrupt my movie to tell me about the credit cards?
Why in the hell does AA need to interrupt my movie for non-helpful arrival information, AFTER playing the prepare for landing announcement 3 times?

dunno282

My weekly commute from LGA to RDU. The padding is a bit ridiculous. The official departure to arrival is 2 hours on the ticket. It's only a 450 mile flight which means a one hour flight. this is basically what happens

Flight Departure is at 5:30PM.
Boarding is at 5:00PM.
Close Doors usually 5:20 - 5:30PM since it's a small plane and announces there is a delay (every single time)
We wait on the tarmac delayed for almost an hour because of plane traffic.
Actual take off is 6:20PM.
Fly for an hour.
Arrive on time to LGA at 7:30PM.

if they ever left around the actual time of departure(never) we would be an hour early.

ashill

This is in no way unique to AA, but I wish they had an "urgent" (interrupt the movie: eg prepare for departure/arrival, seat belt sign on, safety announcements) and a "non-urgent" (don't interrupt the movie so you can listen if you choose: everything else, eg credit card hawking, the captain telling us about the routing or interesting things outside [which I really appreciate!], we have movies and wifi, drink and meal options) button for making announcements. Seems like it ought to be possible, though they'd probably have to convince the FAA that the cabin and cockpit crew will never use the "non-urgent" button for an announcement that all passengers are supposed to hear.