IADCAflyer

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.5d47000e34ea

Reading the comments, everybody seems to want to skewer AA. I actually though AA was rather reasonable - chartering buses to get folks home.

Can't win for trying it seems.

C17PSGR

Definitely kudos for chartering a bus to get people to LGA. Sounds like a bit of a perfect storm with the bridge being closed.

nutwpinut

The pessimist in me believes that AA did not charter a bus out of the kindness of its heart, but did so because it would have been a lot more cost effective to do so. The alternative would have been to fly all those people to a hub and then to LGA. This would tie up seats that could not be sold for several days.

I wonder if the bus company they used was reputable and dependable?

3Cforme

It had to meet DOT standards for interstate transit, the same as any other interstate bus.

C17PSGR

it's been a while but I had a flight cancelled a few years ago and we were all put on a bus. It was within an hour and I was wondering how AA put things together that quickly. I suspected that maybe there were some bus lines with IDIQ contracts keeping buses around the airport just in case they could quickly pick up some work.

FlyerTalker688786

May I quote from the article:

I read in Chinese forum that Kuo directed the couple to go across the street. For someone who does not know where it is, the said McDonalds is on the junction of I-95 and SR20. You have to cross a main road (not quiet residential street or street mall street) to the Applebee. In the same complex of Applebee, there is a Home Depot and a big shopping plaza (i.e. BUSY).

So the accident happened when the elderly couple try to cross the busy road which trucks frequent passing by, in a miserable condition, no sense of direction. And as Chinese as they are (I am from China so no racism here to make the remark), they are likely to cross the road at their own free will rather than going to the crossing and cross with the signal as well as watch the right turn traffic.

I believe the blame is neither on the elderly couple for not observing traffic or the trucks and another car which hit the couple without noticing, pending police investigation. I do not see how AA is responsible for this elderly couple's personal action that may caused the accident. However, I am sure a good lawyer will argue all he/she can to make a case. In my personal opinion, however, the elderly couple should be responsible for their own action once they decided to leave the designated rest stop to cross a major road.

FlyerTalker688786

Sorry the junction is I95 and SR22. Can not edit my own post.

enviroian

I would assume AA maintains an approved vendor list for such subcontractors. These subs (in this case bus) are vetted over various criteria and show a clear history of non reportable incidents with OSHA and DOT.

HomerJay

The sheer size of the storm - and the thousands of flight cancellations - led to airport hotels being completely booked over much of the country. There was
likely no way AA could have helped all their diverted passengers secure hotel rooms, no matter who was paying.

Sending them up - in the middle of a terrible storm - on a bus without a rest room was about as stupid and negligent as can be.

Miss Kuo is absolutely an angel. What she did for that elderly couple shows a brave, kind, and beautiful spirit. She's the superhero of this story.

ashill

The title of this thread misrepresents a bit what happened. From the article, the passengers weren't injured on the chartered bus; they were injured walking across the street on a rest stop.

So yeah, that sucks. Sounds like it was a terrible travel day in the Northeast for all. Kudos to AA for trying to make something work for their passengers, though it's too bad that it didn't in the end. I'm fairly unclear what American did wrong here. Maybe the communication could have been a bit better, and the charter bus company perhaps could have handled things better, but it seems to me like AA was making good efforts to get passengers where they were going in a bad situation.

No doubt about it in my mind. Ironically, fear of bad press/social media for not doing their best to get customers where they were going (American Airlines passengers stuck in Baltimore! The humanity of it all!) may also have fed the decision to charter a bus when they couldn't land in New York. But I'll still give them credit.

rufflesinc

Was it just the passengers plus the driver on the bus, or was there an AA rep there to assist? And no bathroom and no phone charging?

ashill

AA chartered a bus. I give them credit for that. Not personally inspecting every bus for rest rooms (or thinking to ask) is not really something I fault AA for. It's not like it's at all reasonable to expect AA to keep a fleet of buses with nice bathrooms (and F seats?) ready in Baltimore for whenever there's a big storm. And there probably wasn't a glut of buses available to be chartered at the time.

rufflesinc

Why is not reasonable to expect long distance buses to have a bathroom, especially given this was in a snowstorm where the travel time could be expected to be much longer than normal?

ashill

I've been on buses chartered by AA a few times (MSN-ORD), and AA never sends a rep on the bus. Just passengers plus the driver (who is of course an employee of the bus company).

ashill

It is reasonable, so reasonable that I wouldn't even ask. So I don't get skewering AA for it. But there also probably wasn't much choice; as I said, I can't imagine there were lots of charter buses ready to go.

I wasn't there, so I don't know how good the communication was or whether the bus was presented as optional (which I'm sure it was). I'm sure it was pretty chaotic at BWI, especially for passengers who don't speak English or even a language which uses the Roman alphabet.