AAdamE

On a positive note, the attendants at the Admirals Club are amazing and went out of their way to point out there was no one on the upgrade list for my recent flight from ORD - CUN. As a newly Gold status member, I used my 500 mile upgrades, and was upgraded to First. I've used miles to buy tickets in first before and was always impressed by the service.

For starters the flight boarded 10 minutes early, no biggie, and boarding was totally complete about 20 minutes before departure, so instead of asking us if we needed anything, the one FA in the front literally asked the other "What do we do," and proceeded to chit chat with the other FA. Considering this was a 3.5 hour flight I wasn't too upset about not being offered a PDB. Once we were on our way the FA asked folks what they wanted to eat. Somehow several couples were not seated together so many of us offered to switch seats before takeoff. This confused the FA and she literally accused/scolded the woman next to me of asking for two meals, when all she did was ask for one of the food options. Ok. Still not a big deal I thought.

Once the drinks started coming, I let go of the few hiccups thus far. Less than an hour in the flight they were completely out of vodka and champagne, which I could see happening on a short 1.5-2.5 hour flight but really? Again, at this point I was still fine, but the fact that the FA didn't even ask people if they wanted anything instead was not the greatest. She delivered the food, and after asked my seatmate but not me if I wanted another drink, and was gone for 30+ minutes. I noticed the other FA would frequently transit between coach and first to share more gossip, I thought to ask her for a drink and she said that the other FA would need to. After waiting 30 more minutes, I walked up to see the FA sitting and texting on her phone, and kindly asked for a rum and diet. She said "It'l be a few minutes," ... ok.

20 minutes later my drink arrived and it had no rum. At this point my seatmate who I didn't even know was so upset with this FA that she asked if she could taste my drink, and agreed there was no rum. I asked the FA if there was rum and she said yes, and that they were low on spirits. Ok. I then ordered a beer (thinking how could you mess that up) and my seatmate asked for a red wine, to which the flight attendant said "What about red wine?!" My seatmate just said forget it, and was visibly upset. 20 minutes later a full to the brim glass of red wine was flung to my seatmate and spilled pretty much everywhere. The beer I was given basically exploded on us.

I often get a better level of service in coach, so I have two questions: 1. Is AA domestic First usually bad (i.e. runs out of beverages early in the flight and overall rude service) even on longer 3+ flights? Again, I am an understanding person, but even other passengers were upset. 2. Would AA consider refunding my 3x500 mile upgrades?

brewdog11

This poor level of service is irregular, IMHO. Most of my experiences in AA domestic F are average to good, with a few great experiences and a sprinkling of terrible ones.

You might get your 500-mile stickers refunded if you ask. They've done it for me in the past when the plane was not cleaned adequately. From your description, the service indeed sounds poor - I would write in.

AA Customer "Service" is another story. There's always a chance you might get a shoulder-shrug canned response as a reply.

lds89

Sounds like you got a really horrible crew. I would certainly complain. It's also rare to see them that low on spirits - might have been a catering issue. Usually a friendly AA crew member will go back to coach to get some wine or other item if it's run out in F.

PDBs from LAA crew, especially on international are usually just water and OJ or nothing. It's unfortunate. In the air, though, the vast majority of FAs I've had are proactive and friendly about refilling drinks and checking on folks. You might get a miles offer if you just complain, I think it's worth it to ask for your certs back based on your experience, if there's value there, or take miles if they are more valuable to you.

JDiver

It sounds like the flight was short-catered on alcoholic beverage supplies. That’s not anything the FA can do anything about.

It also sounds like an exceedingly poor FA - Tweet (best method) details if you would, because this is not the norm and this FA should, IMO, be retrained.

I’d personally not request my 500mile upgrades back, but I’d not be unhappy to get some miles as compensation. But my main concern would to get this FA some corrective attention.

SeeBuyFly

It does sound like the beer can was shaken just before being served. I cannot speak to intent, of course.

nrr

OP asked for diet and rum, but all he got was diet--but the FA (it seems) passed off what she gave him was what he ordered. Yes, mis-catering can occur, but it shouldn't be kept a secret.

AANYC1981

This is too long.....

AAdamE

Thanks everyone, I was surprised to see how many people were on my side with this as some of the threads on here can be pretty brutal to anyone complaining about service. I got an interesting response from AA that basically says: Hey we get it, but the whole point of first class is the bigger seat, which you still got, so sorry, not sorry. Here's 5,000 Miles. Not thrilled with the offer, but understand how much AA dis-empowers its employees to make things right so I'll take that 5K and run with it.

flightrisk

That sounds like reasonable compensation to me. I would say that the "champagne" routinely runs out as most domestic flights are catered with only 2 or 3 small bottles, especially if more than a few people are having it. I would also speculate that flights to CUN have greater amounts of alcohol imbibed. The FA sounded unnecessarily rude and distracted.

ijgordon

skylady

No, this is not the norm!

roberto99

And downright lazy!

abk

​​​​​​When it is an alcohol complaint people are pretty much on the same page.

CloudCoder

When I read the story, I jumped to the conclusion that the passenger had consumed too much alcohol, and the FA was nicely trying to discourage the passenger from over-imbibing. Keep in mind that this is a completely uneducated guess, as I never drink alcohol so I don't know the customs, jargon, etc. But if you ask for a drink and they don't bring you one (or suggest less intoxicating drinks), that might be a pretty clear sign that they believe you've had too much already. Maybe I'm the only person on the planet who reached this conclusion. Still, you got 5K miles for it, so there's that.

seat38a

The last time I flew AA was from ORD to LAX in FC courtesy of UA because we could not make UA's last flight of the day to LAX on UA metal due to mechanical delay. After that, I never flew AA again with my money.