MikeShores

I'm just curious if anyone knows why AA is such a fan of the 5-10 minute rolling delays. Reading through the threads here, there are numerous examples of this, but no understanding of why they do it. My latest example was AA 1933 PHL-AUS on 2/21. At about 4pm, I checked the app and it showed "On Time." When I checked the inbound, it said that arrival was 6:45 pm (Departing BOS at 4:58 pm - which it did). (Departure to AUS was 6:00 pm) They did not update the departure time until 6:20 pm (50 minutes AFTER boarding should have commenced)...and they moved it to 6:10 pm. (???) At 6:25pm they rolled it to 6:20 and then at 6:30, they updated it to 6:50pm. We departed around that time. This was a known delay...no aircraft, no flight. It seems like people are more infuriated by the rolling delays/lack of information than they would be with a simple 45-minute delay. I would have enjoyed being unconcerned in the lounge for another 45 minutes. Instead, I trudged to the crowded gate area...just in case they had something going on despite the AC staff assuring me it wouldn't depart until around 7:00 pm. It was an overbooked flight and I have seen them rarely take a posted delay of say 2 hours and at departure time sometimes update it to "on-time" because they sourced a new aircraft or crew..

A little background...I was a gate agent for United back in the day, and I understand the reasons for delays are varied. There were delays we posted (mech, late arriving aircraft, etc.) and delays we didn't (EDCT) but if we knew we would be delayed, we posted the best approximation of the actual delay. AA doesn't do this, and I find it causes anxiety for most. That said, why do they seem glued to this method???

MiamiAirport Formerly NY George

I find that when there's a late arriving a/c AA is often horrible about turning around the a/c. Some of that is out of their control, like getting catering to plane and finding cleaners as the a/c is not arriving on time. All of this starts these ongoing 10-15 minute delays. GAs are often lazy at communicating information.

Check

The part that grinds my gears is how they deal with late arriving aircraft, which is not really something subject to interpretation or a potential range of outcomes like a mechanical delay.

It should be relatively simple to set up some kind of IT function to make the departure for the next flight a very optimistic 20 minutes after the arrival of the inbound. No human intervention required unless they want to make it less optimistic.

GA laziness definitely comes into play. The good ones make announcements, the bad ones just stare at their computer so only people looking at FlightAware know that the plane they're supposed to board in 5 minutes is 600 miles away.

jordyn

It's because AA does not have a customer service mentality and sees no advantage to providing useful and timely information to its customers. This should be obvious from their behavior across a number of fronts.

Antarius

the onus of truthful departure times should not be on the GA. I agree that some are proactive in being up front, but the burden of managing this is on AA. If the inbound aircraft hasnt left yet there is physically no way departure can be in 20 minutes. Yet AA's ops keeps feeding us deliberately false information every 20 minutes.

Stripe

I would assume the problem lies with AA's dispatchers. They are the ones who ultimately make these calls, and they sometimes seem very slow to do so, especially for regional flights. Self-defense is the best option here. In these situations I always check on the status of the inbound flight, and that flight's inbound flight, if it's not already in the air. That can give you a heads up on delays due to late arriving aircraft. Doesn't help you with crew related delays, however, and mechanical delays are often impossible to predict. If you see delays incremented by 15 minutes and the flight is still not departed you can assume a mechanical delay and that AA has no clue when it will really depart.

I also consult the flight timeline in something like the flightstats app or ExpertFlyer. Those are still dependent on the timeliness of AA dispatchers but you can often get ahead of what agents know or are telling you. If it's a crew or otherwise AA controllable delay I always take a screenshot of the flight status notes in EF in case there is some later discrepancy about the cause of the delay.

TSparky

This is one of my pet peeves, and it happened to me last night. Anytime my flight starts the rolling 15 minute delay, I start looking at other options. Last night after the 2nd delay I called the EXP line and they got me on another flight/routing. Although that's not always an option, especially on the last flight of the day.

That said, my guess is they do if because of human nature. If they tell you the flight is delayed 2 hours, a certain percentage of people will arrive at the airport 2 hours later. Another group will find a restaurant in the terminal. If AA then finds a way to get it off earlier, these people will probably miss their flight - and be very vocal. With the rolling delay, everyone just hangs around the gate area. And grumbles, including myself.

enpremiere

This topic has been hashed to a pulp.

It's ultimately an operational choice; by not providing accurate or timely updates and choosing a 15 minute rolling schedule, there is a chance of recovery at bigger bases and helps to avoid moving customer loads around when a cancellation is likely but not certain.

Frankly it's ridiculous in this day and age but then again when equipment or crews can be swapped at the last minute, there are plenty of unhappy "undelayed my flight and it left without me" stories.

nachosdelux

I think AA is by far the worst at this, compared to SW/DL/UA.

I go to "plan B" much earlier when flying AA than the others because of this (once I find out a little more info about status of the plane and crew)

Recently rented a car after only and hour delay because it was not looking good.

turned out to be the correct decision (4 hour drive), as the original flight was delayed (incrementally) for 9 hours, then cancelled.

Antarius

I would agree if it was rampant industry wide. This is an AA thing only. No one else (save for the real Mickey mouse club airlines like Air India) are incapable of providing a reasonable new time of departure with a high degree of confidence.

MrAndy1369

I remember pmAA had rolling delays, too, while pmUS was more honest about delays. I guess that certain pmAA practice was inherited after the merger.

HiAperture

I agree, I monitor the flight notes on the flightstats website, which shows the actual estimated gate and runway departure being reported (presumably to ATC?). I have caught AA using their "rolling delay" technique multiple times when the real delayed departure time was always known in reality. I think the gate agents know more than they let on as well. I was at the airport early and got notice my flight was delayed, so I went to the gate for an earlier flight to see if they could move me as it was a couple hours earlier but also delayed. The gate agent told me he could move me, but my flight two hours later was still going to take off earlier then his flight. Sure enough when I got on the ground on the other side, the earlier flight I tried to move to was about an hour behind me still in the air. I was definitely thankful he told me to stick with what I had.

My assumption is it is done so passengers do not demand re-accommodation on other flights as quickly, and so that people still show up to the airport on time, and don't wander too far from the gate area, in case they make an equipment change and get things moved back up.

enpremiere

Exactly why I used "choice" instead of "for operational reasons" - American chooses to do this while everyone else realizes the value of transparency even if they can't operate the flight or recover from an MX/crewing issue.

chicago747

Perfect example. AA2798 ORD- SFO today. I take this flight quite a bit. 5:05pm departure...shows on time. In bound is coming from PVR and lands 4:42pm. Will they find a replacement or roll delays until they tow the plane from T5

SOBE ER DOC

Ultimately, I think this is a case of misguided priorities on the part of AA. There is a complete lack of concern on their part about how their operational performance and how their communications protocols impact travelers. AA seems lack the understanding that passengers' time is valuable. They also seem to not understand that they lose a lot of goodwill when they force you into a tight connection, pull in late and then don't bother to tell you that your connecting flight is delayed while you run like an idiot from B15 to E36 in CLT...something I used ot do at least once or twice a month until I was smart enough to start using FlightAware. There is a culture of indifference +/- incompetence at AA that is only getting worse.