clubord

Often1

Figuring out how much of what delay is attributable to what reason is an exercise in futility.

Much easier and less stressful either to understand that you may get stuck with a night in a hotel once in a while or, if you want/need to hedge that risk, have a basic travel interruption policy.

brewdog11

When in doubt about these things, simply record all the facts and write the US Department of Transportation. This is an issue for them to look into.

Catbert10

I have noticed that referencing a complaint to the DOT tends to get Customer Service more focused on providing adequate resolution to an issue.

DCP2016

DOT complaint and then small claims if that doesn't work out. They want to play games, so play them.

Exec_Plat

The key is being able to prove what you are told at the time of the event. Ive asked for a print out or asked that they document it in the pnr.

I swear AA has a attorney on staff in operations, helping them craft the facts to allow almost anything to be called 'weather'.....

bswiz

Right, I suspect that the crew had other issues earlier in the day due to all the weather. But that's kinda my point - if there had not been the maintenance issue, we would have left the gate and avoided the crew time issues, even factoring in the issues earlier in the day. At least that's the impression the pilot gave us all.

To others who have suggested hinting at the DOT, I never would have thought of that. I have asked for a customer service manager to contact me by phone, so we'll see what's next.

ianj844

As I've had it explained to me by AA before the longest delay reason takes precedence regarding compensation. So for example if you have a 2 hour delay total. 1.5 hours cause of Weather and .5 hours cause of an MX issue the delay is deemed a weather delay as that was the cause for the majority of the delay. I don't think the 7 minute maintenance delay takes precedence for everything else. From past experience I don't think you'll get much from AA past a CS gesture and I really don't think there is a DOT claim in all of this.

ryan182

thats nonsense, the flight was ready to push, had there not been a maintenance issue it would have taken off - ergo the cancelation was due to maintenance. Period.

flyingeph12

I have also been given this explanation.

I agree with you that it makes little sense. If the mechanical delay is later in the chain of events, and if I had not missed a connection (or otherwise have been forced to overnight somewhere) but for the mechanical delay, I would say AA is at fault. In other words, the mechanical delay interrupts the chain of causation. In your case, it seems even clearer—the flight would not have been cancelled had there not been the mechanical issue.

That said, nowadays I rely on trip delay insurance through credit cards, rather than AA, to compensate me for incidentals like hotels, food, transportation, etc., during delays.

TonyBurr

I hope no one is implying that any airline would lie and not be totally honest with the pax ???

bswiz

I do have a Chase Sapphire Reserve that has travel protection, not sure how to use it in a case like this. I do also have the option to expense this to my company since this was a work trip, but trying to avoid that unless I have no other options.

flyingeph12

justhere

Not defending AA as I don't know all the details but that's not how it works. The plane can't take off without a crew and if they couldn't get a crew there in time due to weather, then the cancellation could very easily be coded to weather. There are multiple delay codes, +/- 100, depending on the airline. There's no way that the original crew was just 7 minutes away from timing out unless other delays occurred earlier. Once all the delays are coded, they'll have guidelines to determine if the uncontrollable delays (WX, ATC, etc) are significant enough to attribute the cancellation to WX or MX. We may not agree with their assessment but right or wrong, I guarantee that their legal department has a guideline that they feel they can defend when attributing to WX.

Think of it this way. Storm moves in during the day. Thunderstorms, etc. Crew that is flying your flight lands their previous flight right before the storm moves in. All flights delayed due to WX. 3+ hours later there's a break in the storm and crew flies their next leg to your airport but due to storms also have some ATC rerouting and are now 4 hours behind schedule. Running close on duty time but all looks good until they are about to pushback your flight and they call for maintenance. Can get it fixed in 7 minutes so crew times out. There's no other crew to fly your flight so flight is cancelled. There are at least 3 delay codes assigned to why the flight was cancelled. W# ~ 180 minutes, A# ~ 30 minutes (both due to the delayed crew), and M# 7 minutes. So yes, if there wasn't a small mechanical issue the crew would likely have pushed back in time so that they didn't time out. However, you can't attribute the cancellation just to the MX delay. It was just 3% of the total delay and had the WX and ATC not played a big part in the situation, the flight wouldn't have been close to being cancelled. So you cannot discount or ignore the other codes and only attribute cancellations and delays to the last code or only to an Air Carrier code.

You may not like it that way and you may feel that's not how it should be, but that's how it is and until the DOT changes the rules for reporting delays, it is what it is. If someone decides to sue AA claiming that AA is attributing delays that are coded to WX or ATC, etc that should be coded to an Air Carrier caused delay, I would imagine they'd have a significant hill to climb.

iadisgreat

I just got delayed overnight due to weather and you better believe it's just getting expensed - why deal with credit card insurance?