palermo

AA996 had an initial 5 hours delays at EZE due to software issues. 3 hours into the delay, the pilot announced that by the time the issue was hopefully solved, the crew would be timed out for DFW and that they were trying to re-route the flight to Miami as the only viable option. And that then with a new crew, we will continue to DFW.

Long story short 5 hours later (5.45 spent in the tarmac as boarding started 50 minutes before departure time) the flight took off for Miami. Made it at 9am in Miami.

Although throughout the flight the crew said that agents would have everything organised on arrival in Miami. There was, off course, nobody to be seen at arrival and once at the connecting passagenger customer service (After customs and immigrations), there were only 2 agents who had no clue what had happened with AA996 and were totally ill-prepared to deal with the mass of people looking to re-book themselves.

Crew was a disaster throughout. No water runs in J or in Y. I was flying J (with an SWI) so I had the bottle of water but I finished it after one hour. I did ask for water 3 hours later and was provided tap water.

At the Miami connecting passenger customer centre and by the time I was finished rebooking my itinerary (I was lucky to be third in line as I did not have checked backs), there was a queue of +200 people (essentially everyone on the flight with checked luggage or those who wanted to be rerouted).


Also, 2 hours in the roughly 6 hours wait in the tarmac I was awaken by a male member of the crew as they were retrieving the Bose Headphones to be ready in case we had to disembark (ie if the flight was cancelled). This did not end up well. Apparently, they locked the Bose headsets and then the agent could not find the key to the lock or something like that so no Bose headphones were available throughout the flight!. Kindly enough, we were offered instead the cheap black and red headphones as consolation.

My connection from DFW to LHR was eventually changed to MIA LHR in business on AA. After a bit of a heated argument as the agent had booked me in Y on the basis that I was using an SWU and I had paid a ticket in Y. I had a confirmed business seat in the DFW LHR leg so I stood my ground. Worst come worse, I would have sticked with the MIA DFW LHR connection which was already confirmed in C.

1pm and the continuing flight to DFW (which I am lucky not taking) is waiting to take off. Delays happen but AA could have managed this SO MUCH better. I feel very sorry for people on Y that were unlucky enough to have checked-in luggage and that have to ensure.a wait of +5 hours with no food or meals and then a never ending queue of 250 people in Miami to get themselves back on track and arriving in DFW 10 hours late with a c. 6 hours of tarmac waiting time.

AAway

Sorry to say I'm not surprised by any of this. Next time I suggest calling the EXP # ASAP for re-booking, rather than dealing with the agents at the airport.

C17PSGR

Wow! Quite the journey. Surprised about the water issue. Did they otherwise have food and alcohol?

I've found the EXP line to be invaluable under such circumstances over the years and called them while taxiing into the gate such that I was able to have it fixed even before getting to the gate. Miami now also has a Flagship Lounge that presumably would be more used to fixing such things.

Were the agents you were dealing with inside or outside of security?

palermo

Thanks. I did not think of the EXP line but that is a valuable advice. To my defence, I was sincerely expecting that everything would have been taken care. I did check availability in the MIA LHR route myself on expert flyer. This came handy when the agent tried to rebook me in economy.

There were no dedicated agents. There were the 2 people who normally deal with connecting passenger issues at the connecting passenger customer service center. They are after immigration and custom and neither of the 2 people had any knowledge of the situation. Another passenger and I had to explain what had happened as I think we were still showing on route to DFW in the system. Long story short -- after a few phone calls they confirmed what had happened and started to try figuring it out what they needed to do.

I thought it was funny that they openly blaming the pilot for the mess as they did not believe that flying the plane to MIA was the best solution/decision.

It was such a mess as there was no coordination and no organisation in Miami. Except ATC, it looked like nobody was expecting the plane.

As I said in my opinion post, the cabin crew was terrible. No water runs, no snacks and hid themselves in the galleys chatting. The Bose thing was farcical.

Yeah, at the Flagship now. It is super crowded at the moment but I got here early so I have a good spot.

Very disappointed with AA. I can only imagine how much worse things were for coach passengers.

As a slightly unrelated note, in my way down to Ezeiza I flew AA from JFK on 29 April. No entertainment available throughout the flight. As soon as boarding was completed the pilot explained that they tried to fix the entertainment problem all day to no success and that AA management in JFK took the decision to fly the plane without entertainment rather than cancelling the flight. It seems that in the AA world, you cannot have it all.

pdcarg77

Sorry to hear that.
AA996 doesn't seem to be a lucky flight these days.
Just a few days ago, they took off from EZE and had to return 25mins later and perform an "emergency" landing due to pressurization issues.
Flight was delayed for ~24 hours.
I couldn't find any more info, other than a few clips on Argentinean news.

chuck1

Why did everyone has to disembark? Couldn't they have just loaded a new crew and continued on to DFW and cleared customs there?
As I suspect well over 50-75% were going to connect at DFW, maybe they thought they could off load them at MIA and get them to their destination sooner?
If so, why in the world didn't they pull staff from reservations and have them rebook while en route EZE-MIA? They could then have their documents ready upon arrival at MIA.
This does seem like a very poor showing.

pdcarg77

And to make matters worse, AA's Connections Desk at MIA is rather small and normally poorly manned.