Adam1222

This reminds me of the people asking for free booze and complaining because we circled for a bit before landing 60 mins late DFW-DCA last night. They insisted it wasn't weather related, while I was looking at the radar and seeing peoples posts of flooded streets and subways in DC.

There's "not super smooth" and "preposterous.". Sounds like this was closer to the former than the latter.

cedric

To be fair, the folks in operations should be concentrating on effectively managing the operation during difficult circumstances. Each minute they spend on getting things organized affects hundreds of people. Each minute they spend on the phone answering calls to satisfy your curiosity affects one person.

Dr. HFH

Or, if you were a glass-half-full kind of guy/gal, your post might have looked more like this:

masonp123

I'm a 'glass is usually empty pretty quick' kind of guy. Particularly when flying, though I am always polite when asking for refills. That said, while I'm FAR from the most frequent flyer here I'm a million-miler and flying out of ORD for 15+ years am quite familiar with weather-related issues and how rolling delays lead to avalanching delays. Besides general frustration I don't really complain about airline ops in those circumstances. However, I've never seen a situation where there were so many gate changes over a relatively short period of time.

I was very polite to the GA's, who were undeservedly taking a lot of abuse towards the end. The one GA, who I had to earlier inform that our gate had changed as he had just made it to the new/old gate, came over at one point to commiserate. Felt bad for them, front-line in that situation has to be miserable.

Often1

DCA is not ORD. When there is a wind shift or aircraft are backed up at an airport which has very little extra real estate, it means constantly shifting aircraft to open gates to do the best for the most in the moment.

It is a real skill and only part of it has to do with AA. But, the AA piece is done really well and while it looks to the casual observer as though nobody knows what is going on, as a whole the ops people are doing their level best with a very limited amount of space.

cedric hit the nail on the head. If the AC folks are bugging some ramp supervisor they know by calling his cell because he may be privvy to a bit more operational information a bit sooner and all of that just to get some idiot off their back, that's slowing down operations for 5 gates. Not exactly my definition of customer service.

jasondc

Today was just a disaster for my travels from DCA. Though it only lightly rained in DC, according to weather.com there were far away clouds that looked like they might have stormed. Well, my 10PM DCA-SDF, which had been booked full (according to the agents I spoke to last night when I called with a question about my reservation) was cancelled. Cancelled because the inbound couldnt get in due to "aircraft congestion". VERY frustrating. This was an E175. I have no idea how they rebooked people. When I called they couldn't rebook us on ANYTHING tomorrow from DCA. She offered me late afternoon departures from IAD. Everything out of DCA on AA to SDF via nonstop, ORD, PHL or CLT was full leaving DCA. Unacceptable. Finally, she offered me a flight on "United Airways" through Newark. So now my partner and I are flying on "United Airways" through Newark at 7AM. I hope we make the connection. I will say the agent was very nice and did let me vent (and I apologized and acknowledged it wasn't her fault). That said, this is the 3rd time in 2 months where I've had the exact same problem with this flight to SDF from DCA. it ALWAYS cancels at the slightest hint of rain. Not impressed with AA.

jsieds

In my nonscientific personal experience flying in and out of DCA on a nearly weekly basis over the past ten years, AA ops since about October last year has been terrible. Good weather, bad weather seems to make no difference. Gate management seems to be particularly problematic where waiting for a gate after landing seems to be the norm rather than the exception. Rolling delays are common where departure time is not updated until after the scheduled (and multiple times reschedule)departure time. The unreliability of AA at DCA for my travel is such that I am now booking on other carriers.

Geauxtigers

*****

AANYC1981

This sounds like AA Ops in general....rolling delays that only get posted after the latest delay time has come and gone.

flyer703

Looks like your inbound (Republic 4676 from MCI) was cancelled. I try to avoid regional carriers out of DCA as they are the first to cancel whenever any minor thing goes wrong. Obviously you can’t do that going to SDF but I would expect the worst. Especially on a 10pm departure with a 61% on time arrival.

Yep, this seems to be a significant, on-going problem since the merger. I was on AA52 a few weeks ago from LAX. Arrived early but taxied to the run-up block on the other end of the runway and waited an hour and a half for our gate to open (which was really nice after a 5+ hr transcon). Captain apologized several times and said he was doing everything possible to get another gate but there were simply none available (our gate was occupied by an outbound to ORD that was 2 hours delayed). While we were sitting there I was listening to DCA Ground on LiveATC and there were many other arriving AA aircraft in the same position told that their gates were occupied. I counted 6 others on far-flung taxiways waiting for gates when we finally taxied in. I spoke with the captain on the jetway when we exited. He was clearly pissed off and frustrated with AA ops and thanked me for my patience and business. AA needs to fix this.

Often1

Where would you have off-loaded the pax?

Sure it's frustrating. For pax and for crew. But, the alternative is fewer rotations at DCA. Those aircraft stuck at the gate have nowhere to go unless it's to the same place where your aircraft was stuck, in which case it's a zero-sum game. Or not. Because, when the departing aircraft's crew times out, the flight is likely cancelled. Your crew is simply more exhausted, but at least need only taxi to the gate.

jsieds

I encounter the variety of AA problems at DCA during mornings, afternoons, evenings, good weather, bad weather, M-F. My more limited weekend experiences have been fine. The only thing in common is AA at DCA and me on the flight!

arlflyer

Guess we will have to agree to disagree on the definition of "rare". Coming from MCO where you could set your clock daily to thunderstorms as powerful as that "derecho" thing from a couple years ago that DC people are still freaking out about, I consider the sort of weather we had last week in DC to be rare for the area. I would agree with your frequency of about once a year.


Given you mention BOS-DCA in your profile, are you a legacy US person perchance? Agree that, in my experience, ops at DCA are seemingly less efficient/organized with the merged airline than legacy US was.

cmd320

Lol, agreed. Not really sure what a derecho actually is (probably a term TWC invented to further sensationalize weather events) but I'd reckon there was 20-30 of those in the thunderstorm I drove through to Vero Beach last weekend.

jsieds

I am a LUS flyer with about 50 percent being shuttle flights DCA-BOS. AAShuttle movement to center pier, has reduced reliability in my experience. That being said, this morning's AAShuttle flight was perfectly fine.