wetrat0

These replies don't make any sense. They were delayed at the check in counter and people are saying they should have arrived earlier. I'm sorry, can someone explain why it should take longer to check in one group of 40, than 20 groups of 2, or 40 individual passengers? All the people saying they should have known it would take so long to check 40 bags, please explain what AA would do if 40 "normal" passengers showed up on time for the flight and all needed to check bags??

wetrat0

I see we posted basically the same question at the same time... I think you phrased it better!

ijgordon

The point is, that's not how reading comprehension works.

However, I don't know if there is different guidance for large group travel. That might seem to make sense.

Dave Noble

There is one difference - If there are , say, 4 check in deaks - then 1 group of 40 is going to likely be limited to 1 check in desk whilst 40 individuals would spread across the check in counters

From the wording on wthe website, it makes no mention of earlier arrival time for groups and it seems that they arrived in line with what is actually listed on the website for recommendation - hard to blame someone for following the recommendation and not "obviously knowing that this should be ignored and a longer time allowed"

ijgordon

I'm certainly inclined to agree, but frankly, group travel is quite different from individual travel. Those 40 individual pax could probably be checked in by 3-4 or more different agents. The group may well have had to be handled by one agent. The fact that these were minors might have also played into it. I don't really know.

ibrandsguest

AA should make a $2k donation to the church to make up for it.

Or would that inflame things in this polarized country? Perhaps AA doesn't give to religious causes by policy.

AA should give them $2k worth of travel vouchers for use by the next group from that church, perhaps.

Dave Noble

If AA is at fault, it should meet their costs incurred , not give a donation to the church; those impacted should be compensated, not the church

From my understanding, the church ddn't fund the trip itself

Collierkr

JonNYC

There are dozens of reasons not to fly AA vs. UA (in your case) or DL, etc., etc.

I literally can't think of a stupider one than this.

mvoight

Well, it takes very little time for 40 individuals on individual bookings, especially if not international.
Many of them simply check in from home, the car, or the kiosk. In any case, if there are 40 people outside your plane 3 minutes after boarding cutoff, why give up that much goodwill?
Instead, they left these young people thinking AA is not the airline to fly............As the saying goes "penny wise, pound foolish"....

YOUR_FAVORITE_AUDITOR

Because the 40 "normal" passengers would have been handled in parallel, not as a whole group in series (one-at-a-time).

Wrangling 40 people is a difficult task, almost impossible when you're dealing with a group of young adults. There's too much stuff happening for 1 customer service rep to manage and keep straight in their head. What they should have done is split the group of 40 into 5 8-person groups; select a leader for each group, and give that leader responsibility for managing their group to the plane. Each leader can check in their people through the automated kiosks. Even better would be to book the tickets so AA sees several groups instead of 1 massive group.

Dave Noble

It is not for someone making a group booking to try and second guess what would be easiest for the airline. The booking would have been made through AA's group booking department and it would be up to it to do what is most appropriate

5-8 passengers would not count as a group booking

Blaming the passenger for not trying to divine what would be best for the company it is making a purchase from , seems quite unreasonable

In many cases, where someone is complaining about issues with flights, it seems that the passenger was at fault. In this case, the documentation on the AA website says to arrive at least 90 minutes before departure and they seem to have arrived at 116 minutes before departure - the agent decided to try to circumvent the procedure for checking bags in , which would have wasted time

as is reported, it does seem that AA is at fault - trying to blame the passengers for making a group booking does seem risible to me

CPRich

What does a connection have to do with not being able to board at the origination? How do we even know what the connection time was?

CPRich

Again - how would having 2 hours, 3 hours, 6 hours, 8 hours in connection have made any difference to how long ti took them to board at their origination at CVG?



As I posted above - AA checks in 40 people for an individual flight about 6,000 times a day. 40 is not a volume problem. It's a process problem where the agent tried to do everything and then, as the end, pull a rabbit out of his/her hat by putting 40 bags on 1 ticket.

40 individual tickets - treat them just like 40 passengers and have the many agents at the desk process them, just like they do for every other single flight. I've flown with many large groups - never has an agent said that every single person need to see the same agent in sequence.

Again - idiotic.

CPRich

Why?

I've never experienced this with large groups. I flew with my daughter's class trip to Quito/Galapagos last summer. Everyone stood in line and was processed by the next available agent, just like every other passenger/flight. The fact that we were together made absolutely no difference.

The kids, from the photo, aren't 9 years old. Teens are perfectly capable of handing a locator number, or first/last name, and passport to an agent by themselves.

I place the blame on the agent - I'm guessing a supervisor - that appears to have told the one agent to process everyone using a highly unusual (and, as we know now, not possible) process.