dsquared37

Is that your history or theirs?

apeortdz

What would happen if (in the same situation) the person bumped was in a party of two? Would they ask one of the two to move back or take another flight, or look for a different party of one to move?

arollins

I have a feeling that AA's algorithm takes that into consideration. If one is needed, it looks for the lowest single flyer.

Often1

OP, in this third-person report of what his GF said in her "message" (which leads me to believe that all of this is drawn from a text, voicemail, email not even an interchange between the two), says that the GF received a voucher. But, he's never provided the $ amount.

There is no particular reason for AA to do what it does quite well on flight oversales. It routinely pays $1,000 for VDB's on micro-haul flights where the VDB means a 2-3 hour delay. But, there's no reason to get into all of that because this situation is not mandated and all that is required is that the fare difference be paid, e.g. SWU returned.

AA has gotten out of the business of tossing compensation in the forms of miles & vouchers where it's not necessary. It wasn't here.

aztimm

But what happens if there are 2 people traveling together who aren't on the same PNR, for whatever reason? Say an EXP using an SWU together with someone he gifted miles to? Back in the US days I did this several times, used a CP upgrade for myself, and miles for a traveling companion, and different PNR's.

jordyn

Yeah, I don't understand how this is at all a hard concept for the "AA can do no wrong" crowd. I've been on a CX flight with this exact situation (I was in F, J was oversold so it didn't directly affect me) and they basically solicited two volunteers to downgrade based on some combination of payment + a bulkhead with no one next to them in coach. They ended up having to increase the payment once, but got two volunteers with no fuss and with no one feeling like they'd had a terrible experience, either.

AA's attitude in these situations seems to be "we have a policy that says we can downgrade you to whatever seat happens to be available in coach at this point". I don't think it's hard to understand why the CX approach is better and probably less likely to delay the flight as well.

kb9522

jordyn

First, I don't actually think it's the case that AA has a policy that says "we can just downgrade you whenever we screw up". If you can find one documented, please let us know and then we can compare to CX's documented policies. I think mostly the situation is that CX empowers its employees to find good outcomes for its customers, which AA gave up on long ago.Because only one of the two airlines is hostile to their customers? In every other way, it is literally an identical situation. If you're going to assert that it's not an apples to apples comparison, maybe you should explain why you believe that to be the case.

ijgordon

Exactly. A couple of posters keep referring to AA's policy on downgrades that they execute. I've yet to find such policy, perhaps those posters could enlighten us?

ijgordon

Just like Dr. Dao was, right?

kb9522

jayer

Well, if you would post the original seat number and what 777 interior version she was flying; there used to be people on this board who were Sabre subscribers, They can at least tell you if she was bumped for a paying passenger or another upgrader. Which goes a long way towards determining just how frustrating the situation should be. But not nearly as much fun as pages of dueling speculation.

AA100k

TBD

yep. there's one option.
to quote my favorite celebrity chef, "how easy is that?"

AndyAA

Given the OP's first person account of his phone call with his GF ....
unless the OP mistaken those tears for tears of joy over a free ticket in J to New Zealand, one could assume that voucher did not match the market value the OP's GF placed on her first ever trip in J overseas booked well in advance overseas. Any customer focused airline would understand these sorts of things and have policies in place that manage to select a person willingly to give up a seat in exchange for compensation that the passenger agrees is suitable.

The issue is not whether AA followed its policies, in which nobody on here has a clue as to what it really is, but rather the action the airline chose to take in this situation.

This just reinforces the notion that any passenger shall remain seated in their seat specified on their successfully scanned boarding pass until the airline provides a satisfactory resolution to the situation regardless of whatever screw the customer provision in the CoC the airline may trumpet.