hurnik

OK, had a not so fun time last week.

1/17/18 itinerary:
ALB -> CLT
CLT -> DFW
DFW -> GJT

On 1/15/18 at 11:00 p.m. I get the email from AA stating that I *might* be eligible for a reschedule, and it listed ALB and DFW (but not CLT). But my flight wasn't apparently eligible (I'm guessing because it went through DFW which had issues on 1/16/18), at least according to the AA.com website (there was no "change" option per the email which meant it wasn't eligible). Not to mention that wasn't quite enough time to re-schedule for 1/16/18 and let work know about it.

ALB flight left at 8:00 a.m. (originally scheduled), I think we actually left about 30 minutes late due to de-icing (had about 3" of snow in ALB). I think we arrived into CLT about 10-15 min. late, so not bad. Had plenty of time to get to gate (well about 5 minutes after sitting down, they announced pre-boarding).

We are all on the CLT flight on time (actually early), but they kept the doors open as the pilot announced they had to wait for the push back thingy to show up to push us back and then we'd start "toward the conga line" at the airport. I'd say less than an inch of snow visible (hardly any on the plane, unlike in ALB) but I understand the need to de-ice. I wanna say they closed the door 30 minutes late. We should've taken off at 11:45 I think, and pushed back around 1:00 p.m. By 2:00 p.m. they'd finally made it over to the 4 de-icers and had to power off the engines or shut down the AC or something. It got very hot very fast. The FA finally became visible (they all sat in back reading this whole time) to provide water and one biscoff cookie for everyone. Took about an hour to de-ice.

Meantime, I obviously missed my connection in DFW. And the next one as well. Got rebooked on the last flight that now went:
DFW -> PHX and then PHX to GJT (original arrival was 4:00 p.m. into GJT)

Got into DFW, made it to gate, had about 30 minutes until boarding, so finally had time to get food. They announce pre-boarding and about 2 minutes later say that PHX says there's a delay and we won't leave until 8:30 p.m. (needless to say missing the PHX to GJT flight). Apparently they've been doing construction for a month at PHX and AA just now realizes this (?). Gate agent calls all Yuma and GJT passengers up to counter.

Our choices:
1) Overnight in DFW at our own expense
2) Overnight in PHX at our own expense (it's not AA's fault that they knew PHX had an entire runway closed and didn't adjust schedules apparently)
3) Try to get to PHX and hope that the PHX to GJT flight is also delayed.

Now, lessons learned, but I have an upcoming AA *award* ticket on 2/1/18 from ALB to CLT, CLT to DFW, (overnight at DFW) DFW to OGG on 2/2/18.

So what, if anything, can I do to be more proactive so that I don't quite get screwed again (we have First class Award tickets, and given that I got bumped from my MCE and upgrade seats on this last bout, the last thing I want is to be stuck in econ all the way to OGG).

I understand that one cannot control the weather, but given that First is full (or one seat left) according to the AA.com website, on most if not all the DFW to OGG flights, do I just kinda monitor the weather forecast (for all the good that'll do me as 4 days prior to 1/17/18 the weather forecast was fine and no snowstorm for us), and then try to figure out re-routing options?

Or try to already have alternative itineraries and hope that AA's site is wrong and that there are some First seats available?

Yes, I understand that there's worse things in life than flying coach (like not getting there at all). I believe the Award tickets were the AAnytime at 57.5k miles for each way. I also understand that the "overnight" may complicate things (originally that was the only way to get to OGG due to the time it took from ALB to DFW, but then AA later cancelled the entire DFW flight and created a new one that left later, but by then I don't think it was possible to reschedule the flight leaving ALB early in the morning and getting into DFW).

BTW, I did have travel insurance on the last trip and they would've paid up to $200/night for things.
I also have travel insurance on the Hawaii trip as well.

I just figure that if I have some back-up plans in place, maybe things will go a little more smoothly, although once you're on the plane, you're kinda trapped even if it is 3 hours on the tarmac.

nutwpinut

Better AA weather team, better IT system, and/or give those teams more power to push delays might help with proactive IROPS. If they were a little more proactive, it could help the customer a lot.

I live in SAT and there are no extra planes just lying around that could be used in case of IROPS. I can see that my incoming plane to SAT is delayed by hours and yet my flight out of SAT on this plane still says on time. If they had showed at least some delay then I could have been routed on a different itinerary to get me to my destination at a reasonable time. I find it bad customer service to go from on time to 3 hours delayed when the incoming plane has already had multiple rolling weather delays.

cedric

Part of the challenge with IRROPS is that you need to be able to react on the fly.
Recovering from a delay to a CLT-DFW flight today could be completely different from the steps to take tomorrow, even if the flight is delayed for roughly the same amount of time.

It looks like, in your case, the GJT flight was delayed long enough such that the connection would have been made on the 17th. Hopefully you did make it over to PHX and continued on your way.

In the case of your Hawaii trip, it looks like you've already built in some risk avoidance by scheduling an overnight stay. This should allow you a good margin to get to your OGG flight in case anything similar happens.
Having travel insurance, knowing the policy, knowing back up available options are all good strategies as well.
Have a great trip!

hurnik

Thanks!

Question about Award ticket IRROPS:
What's AA policy on that? Would they "bump" someone else (non-rev) from First to get you on the next flight? Or is it strictly what's available?
Just asking ahead of time so that I don't get any surprises (to be honest, on the return trip the most likely culprit is the DCA to ALB connection as it's only 40 minutes to connect assuming all goes well). I've been through DCA and it'll be fine provided it's not on the other side of the airport where you have to take that stupid bus across the runway.

BThumme

Non-revs would only be cleared into first at the very last minute, so you wouldn't have to worry about that due to logistics of everything; and they certainly wouldn't bump F (paid or not) back down. Usually you can take the earlier flight in Y and get a small refund, or wait around (at your own expense, however long that may be) for the next available flight.

As mentioned above, the only time you can be proactive is A) there's a weather delay and waiver posted or B) AA starts letting people change on the basis of plane delays down the line, regardless of the chance of a plane being swapped.

I also had a similar incident AZO-ORD-DEN where the AZO plane was coming from ORD, from DTW, from ORD....knew it would be delayed, begged (the ex plat line) to help be proactive, but they couldn't budge until there was an actual delay posted (at which point it was too late in the evening for any alternative)...

Check

So, resurrecting this thread because it has the keywords "weather" and "proactive" in them. Is it still the prevailing wisdom that AA categorically refuses to do any proactive weather reaccomodating?

The situation is that my wife (Gold status) is scheduled to fly tomorrow evening from her originating city-PHX-FLG. According to the National Weather Service's Winter Storm Warning, FLG will have gotten between 19-25 inches of snow by the time her flight is supposed to arrive and the high there tomorrow is 25 degrees F so it's not like it will be melting. In other words, 0% chance the flight goes. It's spring training in Phoenix, so hotels are expensive and hard to come by so she'd prefer to move her travel to Friday and stay where she's at now an extra day rather than get stuck in Phoenix tomorrow night with no comped hotel from AA because it's weather. She called the AA Gold line and they won't do anything until there's a weather waiver in place but because FLG is a tiny airport there won't be a weather waiver, they'll just pull their usual trick of cancelling the flight at the last minute. Because her flight to FLG is the last of the day by the time it gets cancelled the passengers from the earlier cancellations will have taken all empty seats on the Friday (and maybe Saturday) flights so I'm sure they'll offer her a Sunday or Monday flight.

DC Mike

I can't answer the above question on proactive weather re-accommodation, but just had this due to a mechanical. Funny enough, also from Albany. American was totally unhelpful.

Due to fly ALB-PHL-LHR on 18 Feb, departing around 6:45pm. The ALB-PHL aircraft was running 60+ minutes late from its first flight of the day, and things only got worse over the course of BOS-ROC-BOS-ROC-PHL-ALB. However AA was only updating the next segment, not subsequent ones, even when that meant flights were supposedly departing before the inbound aircraft had arrived.

I called twice looking for a proactive rebooking to make my connection and was refused, told I'd have to pay full change fee and new fare. Low and behold, ALB-PHL ended up so delayed that the connection wasn't possible.

The diabolical thing was that AA then rebooked a large number of ALB-PHL-XXX people onto ALB-ORD-XXX. When ALB-ORD then cancelled because of weather (after we'd already boarded), the AA agents at Albany refused to cover hotel rooms, saying it was due to weather - ignoring the fact that the rebooking had happened because of a mechanical issue on ALB-PHL. So had people refused the rebooking to the ORD flight, their hotels would've been covered, but not those who were told by AA to go via ORD or were automatically rebooked via ORD.

(Personally I was told the only option would be to pay for my own train to New York City to fly from JFK, that nothing was available from ALB for days.)

Rant over.

intub8r

Cledaybuck

chix

Check

Yes, 0%. FLG has about three people that work there and none of them can shovel fast enough to keep up with the expected rate of snowfall.

Check

Yeah, plenty of options for ground transport although I-17 probably won't be great for some time. Supposed to snow as low as Camp Verde.

Cledaybuck

Check

35.9" of snow at the airport yesterday, a new single day record.