I have yet to be on a flight from AA in the last year which is not delayed or cancelled. I can safely say they are operationally incompetant these days. There are numerous reasons of course for each delay I've had and cancellations seem to happen on a whim with completely fake reasons that they always give. Mostly notably recently they cancelled an SFO-JFK leg with the reason of "due to PREVIOUS weather". Yes they can go back in time now and cancel a flight. This incoming from JFK was delayed 3 hours, but in my opinion that is no reason to cancel. The SFO departure would only have been delayed 1.5 hours. Yesterday I was content to see my ORD->SFO flight on time with the inbound flight from PHL on time as well. At T-2hours they switched the incoming flight to something from DFW that even if it was onetime would have delayed my flight by 30 min. Of course it was delayed and I ended up with a 1.5 hour delay. So far AA has failed to meet any commitments for me. F-!

ONTIME Inbound flight scheduled to arrive after the next planned departure
 

So I have been looking at booking ORD-MCO on AA on flight 55. That flight is scheduled to depart ORD at 6:50pm. I have been reluctant to book due its horrible ontime percentage lately. I looked at today's flight and it shows delayed until 7:50pm. I clicked on the "incoming aircraft" link and the plane being used is coming from is AA2564 FLL-ORD. That flight shows a scheduled departure time of 4:45pm and scheduled arrival in O'Hare at 7:25pm. The 7:25pm arrival is an ontime arrival....35 minutes after the next flight is supposed to depart. How does this happen? I see why the ontime % is bad. Maybe AA is bad at math or this 737 has a time-machine button...but what gives?

All I can realistically think is the plane they were going to use went mechanical somewhere and this was the best they can do. I've seen this issue with this flight a few times though and am wondering if this leisure route is the first one to be thrown under the bus when a plane goes mechanical.

The only reason I really care is this flight might become a weekly flight for me and I want to get a sense if I should be looking at UA or SW.

What is frustrating is the constant discrepancy between different sources of info - be that the app, website, airport FIDS, gate agent announcements, gate boarding screens - nothing ever seems to line up, which is incredibly frustrating. Additionally, gate agents do a poor job of making announcements and providing updates as delays and scheduling issues take place - and many times, they relay false information that you can tell is untrue by simply looking out the window and seeing that no inbound aircraft is even parked at the gate yet.

For sure that's another big factor that really exacerbates the problem of these chronic, systemic, delays.

All indications are that we have reached a boiling point and **hopefully** all aspects of AA's current, obvious-- borderline, crippling-- operational difficulties will be addressed.

On really just an anecdotal note (certainly not saying that one blogger's individual flight problem has any real relevance compared to the extensive collective experience here) but, visibility-wise, reality is reality, obviously, so FWIW, from last night:

http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.c...irlines-delay/

Wonder how rapidly they can implement a schedule change aimed at repairing this?

I said this in another thread, but I think it's worth repeating here. Having worked there for over 10 years, and with many friends still there, I am biased towards flying AA. However, even with a pending relo to DCA, I'll be sticking with DL until AA gets its operational "stuff" together.

Sadly this thread and this latest Onemileatatime post makes me feel better. I'm a fairly easy going traveler (and let lack of PDB's go etc) but flying on AA this year has made my blood boil so many times that I actually dread an AA flight these days.

On my most recent trip there were serious delays in both directions due to operational problems; by proactively calling I was able to rebook onto acceptable alternatives, but with downgrades (from SWUs) on 3 of my 4 legs. Was grateful to get out and home on time (more or less), but it's definitely annoying.

Well, I -assume the brand new people in scheduling are frantically working on that as we type. :)

And then, of course, the not inconsiderable component of labor issues w/ new aircraft being declared MX at the most damaging time (waiting till right before flight), etc., etc-- some of that hopefully is on it's way to resolving itself with new contract. I'd think just dropping some frequencies as a stop-gap or eliminating improbably tight equipment turns at airports where that is resulting in more failures than successes -seem- to me to be pretty easy to accomplish pretty quickly to start the process of returning to an acceptable on-time % and immediately improve the customer experience at least a little compared to the current situation.

Assuming they're serious, and it sounds like they are, they'll do some near term triage very soon. Time to start paying attention to future bookings, even if they're within 90 days.

Flying from PHX-ABQ on Sunday, boarding etc went fine, then we just sat there with the door open and no air going in PHX where it was like 100+ degrees. Finally the Capt. comes on and lets us know they reassigned the FO so we have to wait for another one, literally the FO got off the plane to go somewhere else. We ended up sitting there broiling for almost a hour, I really felt sorry for the peeps not in 1st class.

I'd agree (speculation on my part)-- but for sure, sounds probable to me.

Clearly AA needs to rethink its rebanking of hubs. MIA is a disaster in the evening. I feel so sorry for those paxs trying to make the one connection to SA or the last connection to the Caribbean or Central America while we sit on the tarmac with nowhere to go. For me it means an hour less of sleep, for those missing connections it means an unexpected 24 hours at the MIA airport.

AA can't catch a break....power is out at JFK T8, according to local news (only terminal affected).

DELETE

Been screaming this from the moment they announced the change. As expected, what I found to be LAA's spectacular ability of dealing with mx & weather is gone with no time to recover and poor support from EXP line to help shift people around.

~TG

So you are saying that the executive team forgot to look at all the facts / factors of their decisions and made a purely short cited / penny wise-pound foolish decision? Perhaps this whole running a large airline thing is not as easy as SOME of the team members made it out to be as they bashed out going members.

~TG

I took 8 segments in July. The original plan was 2 AS, 2 AS op by QX, 3 AA and 1 AA op by CP. I actually flew 1 AS, 1 OO, 1 WS, 2 CP and 3 AA.

I only flew 3 of the actual 8 flights I booked. All the rest were IRROP changed.

First flight was AS to QX. 6 hour delay on the AS flight. Boarded and offloaded. By the time we finally departed, I couldn't make the original QX connection (which had nearly 3 hours cushion) so I had to wait around a few more hours for the last flight op by OO. I got to SFO a little after 10 a.m. and landed in my destination, 800 miles as the crow flies, just before midnight.

The return on QX connecting to AS resulted in a cancellation and rebook on WS. Fortunately this one was a non-stop and arrived about the same time as the original plan, so instead of killing time at SEA I ate dinner at YVR.

The next trip was a quick SFO-LAX, CP down and mainline back. The CP flight delayed while I was on the way to SFO, so I stood by for an earlier one. This one cleared and I was re-upgraded so net it was a win. Return flight was slightly late but nothing to get excited about.

The next trip was an SFO-JFK round trip. The outbound was the one on time flight of the entire month. Unfortunately it was the typical no upgrade situation.

The return was a complete disaster. First a thunderstorm opened up as I arrived at JFK. Things weren't looking too bad for us though. AA 85 currently originates in BOS and continues to SFO from JFK, but the plane never got out of JFK to go to BOS so they canceled the first leg and kept the second leg active. They took our plane to use for an LAX flight and assigned us one that was incoming, but were able to board at 9:30 p.m., about 90 minutes after scheduled departure. Then there was a mechanical problem "that shouldn't take too long to fix." About 11:30 p.m. they finally closed the door and we pushed back, only to return to the gate 10 minutes later. There was a different problem. We stayed inside the plane until about 1:20 p.m., when they canceled the flight. The rebook system wanted me to take a flight out of EWR at 7:00 a.m. (which was already delayed to 9 a.m.) and connect in DFW arriving at 5:30 p.m., all in middle seats.

I had to play the hang up and call again game. and I finally found a 3:30 p.m. JFK-LAX-SJC connection. By this time it's 2:30 a.m. The hotels around JFK were hopelessly oversold, so I spent $70 on a taxi and $300 on a room in Manhattan to get some sleep. I get back to JFK, line up to board (plane is also coming out of BOS, but is mostly on time) when they announce a mechanical problem. Finally we board and I'm getting nervous about my connection, but at least I scored the one and only gate upgrade. I ultimately made my connection, with enough time to go into the AE Admirals Club and have one glass of liquid before it was time to board.

So this entire thread has left me intrigued and curious... the claims of flights being delayed "intentionally" by way of late mx calls, has this been substantiated or more so just an assumption and hearsay? Of course I was curious and looked at the departures from MIA tonight and once again flight 56 to LHR has been delayed over an hour for mx reasons, yet I believe the aircraft arrived this morning from EZE at 4am. That does seem like quite a long time sitting on the ground here (at a major hub at that) unable to resolve a technical problem to make an on time 6:15p departure. 🤔

Personally, I consider what I've heard on the subject to be very credible and authoritative.

Regarding the on time performance issues at LAX - have they been primarily on the LAA operation out of T4 and TBIT, or has it been equally bad for LAA as well as the LUS operation out of T6?

The problem is that during the day a lot of routine maintenance is done on the widebodies at MIA and often Maintenance doesn't get the work done in time for departure.

If you see an incoming plane on the app or website that shows an on time arrival but your flight using that plane is definitely going to depart late, it almost certainly means a tail swap happened.

You can use flight aware and see the entire history of tails assigned to your trip if you go to the event timeline view. I've had a trip where five different tails were assigned along the way. I've also had a trip with a couple of tail changes. The one we finally used was parked on a stand just a few hundred feet from the gate at DFW, but we still could not get out on time because it took something like 40 minutes to have it towed into the gate so we could board. It was obviously an operational spare (it was a Saturday when the schedules are lighter).

At any rate, when a plane has a serious problem I don't think it is fair to say that leisure routes are more likely to get screwed than business routes. It really is done on a case by case basis, with factors like connections, crew hours and downstream use of the plane. If this particular flight has few connecting passengers with a crew that has plenty of legal hours remaining and will stay overnight, then it is a good candidate for taking the delay. The plane originally assigned then gets used to save a flight from cancellation due to a legal hours issue or to avoid 50 people missing their connections.

I posted about this in another thread, but recently my wife and I flew DFW-OKC on the last flight of the night. Delayed over two hours due to late inbound from DEN (weather presumably, whatever), but I found it incredibly bizarre that literally 5 feet from the door, while still on the jetway, a mx guy runs out and yells at us to stop, can't board, mx people still onboard. Now I'll fully admit I haven't flown nearly as many miles or years as many of you, but this was the first time I'd ever run into this on AA. Ever. Something just seemed off. The FA just threw up her hands in exasperation knowing that we had 20 minutes to get off the ground otherwise the pilots would be illegal - and if that happened she was going to have 100+ irate passengers to deal with. So in sum, this is only an N of 1 on a rather inconsequential flight, but it sure stood out to me.

dead. last.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/hawaii...163622301.html

Must be those PDBs!

Ha! Yeah, well put.

As I've mentioned, complete shakeup in full effect right now, of course some sage cynics will understandably say:

"When a car gets a flat tire, what do you do? Rotate the tires and keep driving."

But, regardless, much action/attention on this with AA.

Since the merger, I have posted consistently that management's failure to negotiate an agreement with ground employees would be problematic, and I was correct.

Here's what I posted about this issue most recently on July 10:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/26896635-post65.html

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/26896821-post69.html

It's not hearsay; it's authoritative. Now that the busy summer season has nearly ended, management has attempted to rectify the situation with raises in advance of a new contract. We'll see if it works.

SEVEN spots behind UA. Wow. :eek::td:

I mean, I could act surprised but the airline is such a joke that this was pretty much expected. If anything, I'm surprised it's as high as it is and not down in the 60s.

Anytime you are below Spirit in on-time performance things have truly gone south...

Well said.......I have only recently begun posting, but long time lurker and I have many times agreed with your view, as its mine, funny how that works;)

Bottom line, if all you needed to do was cut costs to make money, running ANY company would be easy. This management team believes in the policy of "lets see what we can get away with, and when it really get bad / we get huge customer push back then we will add". Eventually, this will lead to even weaker financials when compared to Delta and changes will be made.

This summer is just a preview of the end for this team. That is my opinion, and I will stand by it. It will get worse before it gets better, because I believe the changes that JONNYC has referenced are merely a bandaid, and not a solution to the actual problem. Time will tell, and all I can do right now is book away from AA till things change, even though that can be more difficult being based at a AA hub.

~TG

Interesting report on NPR this afternoon about AA instructing pilots to use the "speed-up" flight plans in order to make schedule and avoid crew time-outs. The spokesperson from the pilots' union was interviewed briefly who said the pilots are in strong opposition to this as they consider it unsafe in many situations and assuring passengers that they're on "your side" when it comes to safety. AA declined interview requests and sent a statement saying that "safety and regulatory compliance" are their first priority.

The plot thickens....

Parker is a creature of Wall Street that demands numbers and never wants to spend a penny. IIRC some months back when DL gave big raises out to employees Wall Street shrills had a cow. The CEO of DL had no problem telling the pigs of Wall Street that these were the same people that endured pay and other cuts when times were tough and now was their due.

LUS focused much of their attention on on-time performance and ops under the premise that what most pax cared about was getting there on-time and not having their bags lost.

Since the merger on-time performance has slid, Envoy has devolved into a joke of a regional carrier and, Mr. SOBE ER DOC has personally had bags lost three times on non-stop flights in the last 12 months.

Meanwhile, DL has delivered the best on-time performance of the legacies, has refreshed their product, developed a superior int'l biz class product and cleaned AA's clock on nearly every metric.

I say this because, even if AA fixes its performance issues, it's being left in the dust in other areas and just arriving on-time may not be enough for folks not living in an AA fortress hub anymore.

I agree with some of the assertions on here that the current AA management team do not know what it takes to run a world-class airline.

I'm not the first person to say this, but I do wonder if what we're seeing play out is yet another difference between running a large but primarily domestic airline that offered value (US) vs. a massive, truly global airline that's also trying to woo premium customers (AA).

I actually liked the old US Airways...for me at least, it was cheap, generally on time, the planes were clean, and the employees friendly (much better than, say, the unhappy FA's on United). They didn't pretend that they were SQ or CX (or even AA), but they generally under-promised and over-delivered. There were exceptions, of course, like when they tried charging for soft drinks in coach, but overall I felt like I knew what I was getting. And, of course, they were profitable.

The American brand, however, always offered something different and more aspirational...more international routes, better service on board and on land, the whole "Flagship Service" experience, better treatment of frequent flyers, etc.

And now we see two corporate cultures (and approaches to management) colliding. On the one hand, it looks like this summer reflects a series of mistakes in scheduling and running such a large, complex airline -- corner-cutting that may have worked at US and HP. Since Parker's approach took him right up the ladder from HP to US to AA, it's not surprising he'd try the same things that have worked in the past.

As travelers, I think we're also feeling a collision between the relatively high expectations of AA's legacy customers (expectations which are entirely reasonable - the new AA has done nothing to temper those expectations, at least on the marketing side) and the US team's radically different approach to running an airline.

Agree wholeheartedly with these statements. A lot of people are acting like Parker was running this terrible operation which he has foisted upon poor old AA. US Airways was, in my experience, always great at doing what it did: getting me from A to B on time with little fanfare, offering quick and reliable connections at second-tier hub airports, and occasionally surprising even a low-level elite like me with an upgrade to a slightly bigger seat, a few more drinks, and a pass or two of the snack basket.

I'd take back those old days in a heartbeat over the current state of the "premium" airline AA - sitting on hot tarmac with no crew while supposed, I guess, to feel smug about the presence of a buttonhole in my napkin, their 3-class transcon product that doesn't fly to my city, or some new flight to Sydney that I'll never use.

I concur. Some people need to chill with their irrational hatred of Doug Parker. He is not perfect but he is no Smisek. The LUS side is still doing well operationally; almost all of the problem flights/aircraft/hubs are on the LAA side and it sounds as though DP and his staff are taking actions to deal with the problems, even if it means admitting mistakes and backtracking on some things if necessary. We will see how the next few weeks go...

Well that's big of them considering they created the problems in the first place.

They "created them" insomuch as they decided to merge two pretty big companies. I'm not defending everything they've done - the FFP is a mess and perhaps they should have targeted these ops issues more quickly - but in my book these scheduling/ops issues strike me more as a fairly expected outcome of a large merger than as gross managerial negligence. These things aren't exactly easy to do.

That doesn't mean I'm happy when I'm baking on the ground waiting for a crew!!!

I would mostly chalk it up to impulsivity and inattention to detail. They would have been best off just sticking to the banked schedules at US hubs and leaving the AA hubs alone, at least while they conducted the actual research to find out what a banked hub would actually look like in say, MIA, DFW, or ORD.