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-!

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