JDiver

What a tragic situation for the Chinese tourist couple. Thanks to Ms. Kuo, they had an advocate.

As to AA, it’s easy to castigate AA for this, but they tried to do what they could under the circumstances - charter a bus (never was it intended for the bus to be out on the road for that long) to get passengers to their destination, given hotels at BWI were full (under force majeure, AA wasn’t obligated to provide lodging).

The bus didn’t have a lav - did the company have lav equipped busses? Was it expected the trip would last that long? The two passengers were struck crossing a street by a motorist. The two passengers were hospitalized. I’m sad that this happened, but for those excoriating AA, I’m not seeing their fault here - at least this time .

wetrat0

It is a crazy story, although hard to find much blame for AA.

Perhaps it is a counterpoint to the complaints about AA Cancelling Flights Pre-Storm, as this is a case where probably most passengers would have been better off if the original flight had been canceled.

malgudi

I hope neither you or your family are ever in a situation like this. But if you are, by some unfortunate turn of events, I would like to see how you respond then.

FlyerTalker688786

I am not sure if you read the whole story right.

I am going to quote One Mile at A Time report:

If this quote is right, I am not sure if Ms Kuo is a superhero. Of course there is no denial that she helped the elderly couple during the way. However there are too many ifs and buts. Unfortunately the whole thing can be avoided. After all if she did not make the suggestion, the elderly couple would not have crossed the road with her. And the accident would not have happened. And if Ms. Kuo had stayed with the couple all the time and make sure the crossing is legal, the incident would not have happened.

Then again the bus journey could be the best way if there is no other incidents earlier that is out of anyone's control. Read the blog I quoted you will see this paragraph:

And in the end I quite agree with the blogger's opinion:

And I would add an interesting question to people here who is familiar with American justice system:

Would Ms. Kuo have any liabilities since she made (or suggested) the elderly couple crossing road in an unsafe condition?

Again I am not denying that she had been helpful. I am just not so sure if she made a wise suggestion to cross the road assessing the physical condition of the elderly couple and the weather condition of the road.

After all this is a road accident due to carelessly road crossing pedestrians. I really hope things settle at this point. Any more legal or moral discussion will end up with airlines stop chartering ground transportation for stranded passengers in future, which is actually not beneficial to consumers. I will leave the argument here as I think the quoted blog did a great job to tell readers what happened and what needs to be considered to make your own judgement.

MD90

The Washington Post has an article.

It says that "The driver who struck the couple stopped immediately to render aid and was not found to be impaired, Aberdeen police spokesman Will Reiber said.“The pedestrians were struck while wearing dark clothing as they were crossing the roadway in a non-crosswalk area,” Reiber said, adding that the storm and time of the accident had led to “pretty much blackout conditions.”

- - -- -

Unwitting, the Good Samaritan led them astray, crossing a 4 lane undivided highway (5 lane if you count the left turn lane) to Applebee's, a sit down restaurant without fast service, like McDonalds. They were concerned about missing the bus so going to Applebee's was the wrong thing to do. That led to a series of events that resulted in injuries.

Much of the complaints comes with diverted flights. Instead of stranding the passengers for a day or so in Baltimore, they chartered buses. The bus company could have checked the online traffic report to see a slowdown at the bridge past Aberdeen, MD but normally those slowdowns get cleared in an hour or two.

ashill

What would you have liked AA to do differently (the topic of this thread)? That's all I'm commenting on. No doubt that this situation was miserable, as I said. AA could have left the passengers at BWI, but they probably would have been excoriated for not chartering a bus if they did, given Internet logic. It seems there weren't any hotel rooms. AA doesn't have much control over highway conditions on I-95, last I checked, and I don't fault them for having a broken crystal ball about the changing road conditions that ultimately closed the road. Maybe they could have chartered a better bus (but maybe not; as I said, it's entirely possible there was nothing better available), and I have no idea what the communication was like at BWI -- it's easy to imagine that AA didn't do a great job of communicating options. If it took ten hours to go 30 miles on I-95, I'm not sure how the bus could realistically have pulled off to a rest area before they did.

Of course, as someone on FlyerTalk, I'm almost certainly a far more seasoned traveller than the passengers in this story. Even if I were travelling in China (where I know not a word of the language or the character set), I'd almost certainly be better equipped to handle the situation by virtue of my experience, so I am privileged to be in a situation where I can't really empathize from personal experience. But I still try.

C17PSGR

Not sure I understand your post. I get the unfortunate stress on the individuals -- particularly those who do not speak English -- but Is there something you believe AA should have done differently?

pinniped

Only real fault I can think of on AA's part is minor - better communication/organization would have been nice. In the macro sense, it sounds like they tried to do what they thought best: get the pax onto a bus to New York.

I flew *out* of NYC that morning. While we knew the bomb cyclone was on its way, the roads weren't bad. I took an uneventful Lyft out to EWR and flew out before it got too bad. It was more of a wind event at that point - something that would definitely affect La Guardia - but not a blizzard that would shut down all surface traffic. Someone in Baltimore might have judged that bus travel was still safe even though flying was not. Obviously a couple trucks getting into a wreck can change things in a hurry.

Feels like AA maybe needs to get some better bus vendors (?). I know little about how that part works...

Still not sure why people left the McDonald's to begin with. It was crowded? OK, I'm still not walking across a four-lane highway to find another crowded restaurant.

HkCaGu

When you've got to go...

JumboJet

Epic storm

cedric

I hope the passengers make a full recovery.
Having said that, don't believe AA has any responsibility here.
No one would be pointing the finger at AA if they had been rerouted on DL, and the pax got injured making a connection in ATL en route to their final destination.

WorldLux

I can't shake the feeling that the good intentions of the good samaritan led to the accident in the first place. Crossing that type of road in poor visibility and dark clothing is really dangerous.

^

C17PSGR

Particularly considering they had a hard time understanding the entire situation. At a minimum, they could easily have missed the bus and been stuck at the rest stop without speaking the language.

beachmouse

It's not uncommon for the airlines down here in the Florida panhandle during winter fog season to fly to the nearest airport with decent visibility and then charter bus people to the scheduled destination from there. So I always assumed the head of the station did indeed have a list of acceptable vendors on file.

mvoight

I had this happen, but it took about 4 hours before we were on a bus heading ouf of Dulles. I remember them saying it would be 3. There was a snowstorm when we were LAX- JFK and we got diverted to Dulles (IAD)