AA iSolve F/A Onboard Miles Compensation as of Feb 2018 (restricted 8 Jun 2020)
 

Gary Leff announces that, in addition to AA FAs beginning de-escalation training this year to deal more effectively with onboard incidents involving upset passengers, new software on their tablets, ISolve, will be installed to let them address compensable incidents like broken seats or non-working IFE on the spot.

How much compensation? :)

I like this.

lets see what passengers start to complain about, shall we?

Didn't United used to do this? If you pointed out a bad seat, headphone jack, etc., they would then give you a cert that you could submit for miles.

I hope that the hardware issues are actually logged and fixed.

Don't get your hopes up too high. They'll be preset with compensation amounts based upon item being disputed, length of flight, and cabin of service, so the FA can't just give away 'X' amount to you just because you didn't get your choice of food (Pre-orders are GREAT), cabin temperature too hot or too cold, or didn't like the video you watched on your personal device was too graphic.

again, miles will be preset per the item being complained about, length of flight, and your cabin of service you are sitting in.

Sure.. but that's fine. Something small and on -the-spot can go a long way towards assuaging a passenger or deescalating unhappiness.

Which seems to translate to giving a consistent approach to compensation

You mean you weren't looking forward to the in-flight compensation shenanigans thread? :D

Here's a thread from four years again with 15K miles on Delta for non-working IFE. AA solves that by pulling out AVOD.

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/delt...l#post21400811

So how much would I have to complain before I get enough miles for a seat in J on QF 7 / QF 8?

As a consumer, I never thought AAdvantage miles as compensation is a best deal. Will receiving AAdvantage miles on spot during the flight be considered as case closed and resolved as far as AA is concerned? Often it is better to give time to think about the situation. Get off the flight and give a day or two to think about the situation to rationalize exactly how minor or how serious the situation was. Giving AAdvantage miles on spot during the flight will not give a chance for passengers to think about the whole situation, won’t have time to think if miles given was fair or not.

Exactly. I just retired from AA HDQ a few weeks ago and my group was involved with this initiative. The goal is not only to be more responsive but to reduce the volume of formal complaints being submitted to customer relations and they prefer to avoid issuing vouchers when possible. They think it will save money but I expect it will cost them more in the end as not everyone wants to bother with submitting a formal complaint to CR and the F/As will likely comp anyone they are able to comp. Agents should have the Isolve tool as well if they aren't using it already.

Hope they provision extra batteries for the tablets.

How could such a policy go forward without being blessed by the quants? Surely they have modeled the costs vs. benefits, and their computer models tell them the benefits (to AA) win.

Not to be cynical, but how do the FAs view this? Is it empowering or burdensome? Is there some kind of performance metric to hold FAs accountable? It would be interesting to hear about the viewpoint of folks in the trenches, in the front lines, as it were.

They hope this will shift more comp to miles vs vouchers (which cost much more) and hope to reduce complaint volume that would have gone to CR which they also hope will reduce CR headcount over time which is the real savings. Not sure how the front line F/As view it but they probably like anything that can make their life easier with an unhappy customer. Flight Service fought to get this tool. It was originally only intended for agents and the expansion to Flight Service was only approved recently though the analysis and justifications have been going on for a year or so. I'm out of the loop now but I just retired 3 weeks ago.

I would think there has to be compensation options of vouchers for a dollar amount, not just miles. The reason being, not everyone on the plane is an AAdvantage member. I can't imagine someone complains about an issue and the FA's response is, "Well, I see you aren't an AAdvantage member, so I can't do anything to help compensate you".

Nope. They will have to submit a complaint to customer relations on AA.COM like they do currently and most likely receive a letter of apology and nothing else depending on the issue if they have no AADV status. The tool is miles only.

Thanks for the insight. Always appreciated.

Thanks for the information. Makes perfect sense, of course.

I remember in the old Western Airlines days employees would give passengers “Flub Stubs” for minor issues. They were essentially chits good for a drink. Pax seemed to respond positively - it was the airline “hearing” them and apologizing in writing, and IMO it had impact beyond the actual value of one drink.

The only issue I see with this is this will be solely on the individual FA's discretion. You'll have some who with give miles out over the slightest thing like "my seat isn't comfortable enough" or "my drink of choice isn't available", and you'll have others where the overhead bin crashes down on the passenger and the FA will say "tough luck".

Delta handled this by allowing the FA to put in up to 15k for IFE, seats. Beyond this you have to submit a complaint via the message portal while logged in. The 15k allowance was near instantaneous.nHowever in my situation it was a safety issue, since the loss of the IFE meant the pre-recorded safety announcements on the screen and headphone could not be read/heard as well as the reading light not working on a night flight (equipment specific) So ultimately they ponnied up more miles via the complaint portal to make amends

I can't say I have years of experience redeeming miles on AA, but of late it seems that it's become more difficult to get decent value from redemptions, especially when time is factored in. Regardless of whether that is true or not, I would expect the probability of miles expiring worthless is probably higher than the probability of a voucher expiring worthless, and just like chips in a casino, compensating with miles obscures the real value of the compensation, so it is probably a win-win from that perspective. Never had occasion to receive a voucher from AA, but if the amounts are comparable to what one might get from other carriers, it might be perceived as being much nicer to be offered 15,000 or 20,000 miles than it would a $50 voucher or whatever. Beauty's in the eye of the beholder, no?

I'd be curious regarding what proportion of the passengers in a given flight are AAdvantage members, and what proportion really have a sense of what miles are worth.

The instances in which FAs are able to give miles are very speicifc. Broken IFE, pre order meal isn't loaded, etc. They won't be able to willy nilly just throw miles at anyone. Also, the amounts are predetermined (a formula that involves AA FF status, cabin purchased, flight length), the FA will not have the ability to subjectively just throw out miles and pick an amount.

Most front line employees are pretty fed up with the company throwing more tools their way to say sorry, or cover for their failures, instead of actually attempting to improve these circumstances that require some sort of remedy.

Incentivizing people to complain about things that do not warrant a complaint (IFE, for example) is a poor choice.

And nobody wants to hear FA call buttons dinging all flight either.

This won't happen.
Delta is doing this already with no major issues or "burden" to the FAs.

I was on a Delta ATL-LAX flight in December and when I got to my seat, the whole row was taken by a mother and kids.
The mother pointed me to the middle seat in front of her and I did not accept that (I have wide shoulders and had pre-selected an aisle seat for a reason).
FA came and managed to convince the aisle seat pax to give up his seat to me while he took the middle seat.
FA thanked him profusely and then offered him 2,500 miles, which she added to his account on the spot with the tablet, and unlimited drinks and a snack.
(those DL FAs are so nice!).
Everybody was happy.

I doubt AA will implement cash vouchers. Probably just miles as Delta does.
(monkey see, monkey do)

Will the FAs will give out compensation if they don't serve PDBs?

Now nobody will ever get served because as soon as one pax kvetches about the threadcount in their hot towel, there will be a cascade of whining.

On the other hand, it's a good move for AA. While there will be very few people who will pursue complaints afterwards, the vast majority of people will just go away with whatever they are issued.

Miles don't really cost AA anything because it is not as though the number of seats available goes up. Eventually when the investor relations people tell AA it has too many on the books, AA jacks the cost of a given ticket and the miles melt away.

Depends on if the door was open or closed. ;)

Cannot come too sooon. IFE non op on SFO to PHL to DUB in business class. Solution? Move customers to economy / premium economy (which they call business class on board haha).

Nothing else except to write in. Don’t expect much.

Correct. In December I had an AVOD issue and FA came around with an i-pad and I was offered a choice of compensation, which was processed on the spot.
Credit showed up within 48 hrs in my account. Pretty cool!

Does having to use that tiny bathroom on the 737-MAX 8 qualify for on-board compensation? :p

I know it’s not going to happen, but imagine if those compensation miles go towards EQM. Lol

I, personally, as a customer, do not like this approach. Shows that AA would rather throw "apology" miles than really putting in effort to maintain or improve the travel experience. All about the money than truly going for great.

This commercial by AS hits it home...

Which is exactly what AA is hoping for. A few miles now vs a pax who has had time to stew about whatever the problem was.

I guess, there is always the option to refuse the compensation, get the name of the FA and take the issue up with CS.

How much? Which route? Which class?

It's easy to believe the numbers in the model are inaccurate depending on your experience with Operations.
For example, if the maintenance record says that IFE breaks down once every 200 days and stays broken for a 3 days before it can be fixed, your cost of compensation is X.
If you have reason to suspect it's actually more like every 190 days and it takes 10 days before someone complains in a format that's actually recorded and acted on, that 3 day time to repair is actually closer to 2 weeks, with 4x as many passengers getting compensation for the same failure as the model.

Or if the model thinks that FAs will be issuing a credit once per flight based on complaint records, but you suspect they'll be browbeaten into giving it to 4 grumpy passengers per flight.

Or that 25% of in flight compensation offers will turn in to letters to Customer Relations about the measly miles offering they received, which the quants claim won't happen.