knit-in

It's how their favorite airlines have trained them-- with reward and punishment-- to the extent that they don't realize the complete absurdity with which they are treated most of the time.

pinniped

No, it isn't. The minute the delay is posted, you often have access to some rebooking options.

I'd rather the airline be as transparent as possible - give me the best possible information whenever they have it. Don't purposely mislead me. In exchange for that, I accept that flights can become un-delayed.

The alternative - concealing delay information until the last minute - means I still have to be at the airport at the original departure time, *and* I don't have any proactive (earlier) rebooking options. Even from an outstation, I've gotten reroutes and still made it to my destination on time.

Yes, there are occasionally some really weird outlier cases where you lose some time in a lounge because you feel nervous not hanging near the gate. But the alternative...never knowing if your "on time" flight is really on time because you know the airline hides delay information - is far, far worse.

Colin

A posted delay opens up options when speaking to AA Reservations - delay the trip to a later day, reroute from a different origination airport or to a different destination airport, refund a non-refundable fare, change to different flights.
None of this is possible until the delay is posted.

I was once flying AA MAN-JFK-LAX in J on some BA mistake fare.
Noticed just before going to bed that the inbound JFK-MAN flight was a couple of hours delayed but AA kept showing the MAN-JFK as on-time until 3AM.
Then, the two-hour delay posted on AA.com for MAN-JFK, the misconnect at JFK became obvious, and AA Reservations took over the BA-stock-ticket and reissued it to BA J MAN-LHR and AA F LHR-LAX, yes F because the LHR-LAX was J0.

The posted delay also allows people to adjust plans at the destination. Hey, don't wait on me for dinner.

Adelphos

1) Most fliers have no access to lounges, and aren't going to be rebooking into earlier flights
2) Fliers rely on the airline for accurate information. Telling a flier that a flight is departing at 7:00 PM, then having the flight leave at 6:30 or 6:15, is simply not accurate. If seasoned fliers on Flyertalk miss flights due to this issue, what about average fliers?

AA should be liable for missed flights in these situations. They need to confirm the inconvenienced passengers onto the next available flight (including connections).

DenverBrian

Some are discounting the effect of delay notifications for those pax who are already at the airport. For them, delay notifications may be the difference between relaxing at the AC, grabbing a bite at a sit-down restaurant, placing that one work-related phone call so you can get it out of the way, etc. So I'm with the posters supporting AA's delay notifications, even when they seesaw back and forth.

In my mind, from low trust to high trust, this is how I manage expectations around delays:

A friend of a friend tells me my flight is delayed
AA texts me with a delay notification
I look up status of the delay on the AA app
I look up status of the delay on the AA website
I talk to an agent over the phone to confirm a delay
I talk to an agent at the airport to confirm a delay
I talk to an AAngel at the Admirals Club to confirm a delay
I talk to an agent at the gate to confirm a delay
I use my own eyeballs at the gate to confirm a delay

Needless to say, text alerts from AA are pretty down into "low trust" territory.

869

Dudes - when flying during bomb cyclone and airline call wait times exceed one hour, do what you do but get airside asap. No excuses.

Sitting at home because American said you've got time to kill be next level foolish yall.

pinniped

I've rebooked/rerouted many flights without access to a lounge. My recent two examples: (1) AA: Christmas Day, afternoon flight posts a 15 minute delay which I notice at about 10AM, I phone the Gold line from home and get rebooked to a flight 2 hours earlier than my original one. (2) WN: Three days ago, I arrive in the gate area four hours prior to my booked flight. (LH-to-WN connection, four people, we're risk-averse.) Right about that time, it posts a 15 minute delay, I walk over to the gate for the earlier DEN-MCI that's about to board, GA immediately prints 4 BPs for that flight. We get home 4 hours early. That's Southwest with no status, an airline that doesn't even allow standby unless you're very top tier!

I have probably a dozen other examples across all of the airlines I fly, most on AA, where I've gotten a proactive rebooking: either an earlier flight or a reroute that eliminated/minimized the delay. Only a couple of them involved a lounge.


All I ask is that they be as accurate as they can be with the information they have. Certainly there's a trust element here, and I know we generally don't trust airlines too much. But usually the complaint is the other way: they're showing a flight ontime even when your eyeballs tell you there's no way it pushes back on time. If my flight is delayed but they're still working on shortening or eliminating the delay, great.

I don't think we've seen a case where they have refused to rebook someone who missed a flight due to these circumstances. The OP didn't like *when* the next available flight was, so they booked a different airline. But AA did offer them a rebooking, presumably to the very next flight on which they had available seats.

nutwpinut

I wish they would do this. I had a flight SAT-CLT and the delay didn't post until T-30 even though the incoming flight CLT-SAT was 3 hours late. The delay didn't post until just after the CLT-SAT left the gate. It was like they didn't want to post any type of delay until they had an idea of what that delay would be. That kept me from doing a confirmed change to an earlier flight and itinerary. It did; however, allow me to enjoy time with my family by ignoring the AA app and website and confirming with the EXP desk that there were no extra planes in SAT to switch to. The EXP desk couldn't understand why a delay wasn't posted, even a short one just so they could change my itinerary and go through DFW instead of thunderstorm CLT.

joe_miami

The sheer amount of nonsense in this thread truly is a sight to see.

Yesterday there were 10:00 am JFK-LAX flights that were delayed to an "estimated" 4:00 pm before ultimately being canceled. The Veteran Travelers™ here are seriously telling us that pax still needed to be sitting at the gate at 9:30 am?

LOL.

Antarius

My issue with this thread is, the current system works for us frequent flyers who care enough to be on Flyertalk, have EF subscriptions etc etc etc. We track inbound aircraft, delay notes. Most people do not.

If a flight posts a 4 hour delay ahead of time, do you really expect normal people to show up 4 hours before on the chance they decide to move it back?

joe_miami

Exactly right.

Of course not. It's laughably stupid for people to even suggest such a thing. Some people here are really embarrassing themselves with this nonsense.

pinniped

No. I'd look outside, notice the giant bomb cyclone, and sit tight. I'd take my chances that the delay was real - or about to get worse.

But let's say there was no weather situation, everything else was operating normally, and I notice this delay when I wake up at 7AM. I'd quickly get online, look at the logical NYC-SoCal reroute possibilities that appear to have seats, and probably phone AA to see about changing my flight.

joe_miami

Wait, I thought the COC requires you to be at the gate at T-15 regardless? (Haha.)

This was apparently the only flight of the day, or the last flight of the day, available to OP. In such a circumstance, no reasonable person — and certainly no person who travels infrequently — would get a delay notification straight from the airline but then assume it will be revoked without enough time to recover.

Antarius

Or.. people see the delay and adjust accordingly. Say you are visiting Disneyland. You book the 6 AM because it is half the price of the later flights. Your flight posts a 4 hour delay, you smile, go back to bed and show up for a flight at 10. Not wake up at 3:30 and sit at the airport assuming it moves back up. Or most people don't know what they can or can't do regarding changing flights - or don't want to with a family of four.

IMO, the above is what most people do. Non road warriors.

ijgordon

There's really no solution to this problem. Whatever works for the masses by the gate won't work for the elite lounge members who aren't at the airport yet. There's a big difference between a 45 minute delay and a 3 hour delay in terms of whether you should/need to be at the gate at the originally scheduled time. Where is that line? Certainly not anything AA publishes. (Which is why upthread I suggested better differentiating delays from re-schedulings). So how DO you know whether to be at the airport early or not? Sure, common sense goes a long way, but I posit what's common sense to an experienced FTer and to Joe Plumber & Family is very different.
I think the key is AA needs to be transparent and accurate. Get the systems in sync! They also need to be forgiving (which it sounds like they were for the OP -- offering to rebook on the next available AA flight, it just so happened there was a weather snafu and that was several days later).

And maybe I'd also note that DL sends notifications to the app when a flight starts boarding - I believe it's triggered by the first boarding pass scan at the gate. This would really free up flyers to use the lounge, get a bite to eat, etc., without having to be handcuffed to the gate because they might get a replacement plane or ATC might release the ground hold. Unless you go to another terminal, you will always be able to get on the flight if you head to the gate immediately after getting the boarding notification.