What compensation can/should I get for my paid J seat given away? (to merge)
Jan 8, 2020, 8:21 am
#46
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United connectionsaver holds flights for an average of 6 minutes , they operate it at ORD, and they claim to have saved about 3-4,000 connections per month. Even without having the software, giving GAs a flexible 2-3 minutes to wait on door closure when they need to accommodate a few passengers running at the gate is very doable without hurting anyone, while helping many.
For a customer on a paid J seat that is possibly making a connection, I would argue the 'upgrade' should wait until the doors are (practically) closed. For empty seats, by all means upgrades should be processed before boarding starts, but every effort should be made to protect a paid seat for a customer that has any chance of making a tight connection.
Yet, united seems perfectly happy holding flights for 6 minutes at ORD. From March 1, 2019-Jan 1, 2020, ORD-departing flights, United has 22.55% of their flights late, while AA has 24.89% of their flights late. I would argue that the statistics show that T-10 door closure vs a more flexible approach when needed is not in any way "the best for the most".
https://www.transtats.bts.gov/ONTIME/OriginAirport.aspx
For a customer on a paid J seat that is possibly making a connection, I would argue the 'upgrade' should wait until the doors are (practically) closed. For empty seats, by all means upgrades should be processed before boarding starts, but every effort should be made to protect a paid seat for a customer that has any chance of making a tight connection.
Yet, united seems perfectly happy holding flights for 6 minutes at ORD. From March 1, 2019-Jan 1, 2020, ORD-departing flights, United has 22.55% of their flights late, while AA has 24.89% of their flights late. I would argue that the statistics show that T-10 door closure vs a more flexible approach when needed is not in any way "the best for the most".
https://www.transtats.bts.gov/ONTIME/OriginAirport.aspx
AA routinely holds flights such as this, but "routinely" does not mean "every." Neither you nor I have access to the specific data for this flight, nor are we the Ops people who control all of this.
Jan 8, 2020, 8:22 am
#47
Join Date: Apr 2001
Posts: 592
AA is responsible for causing OP to miss daughter's birth
I absolutely share the OP's frustration (anger?) and would be far less measured in my post than he was. AA caused the delay and should have held his seat knowing when his flight was arriving and that he had a chance to make it. It isn't even a question of delaying the flight since boarding was still under way. Worst possible outcome for AA would have been one empty J class seat.
As for missing the birth of OP's daughter, AA is on the hook (morally if not legally). This is not because they (or OP) knew the delay would result in missing the birth--neither did. However, if you carry 200 million passengers per year and treat your obligation to deliver them to their destination on time and with the service they paid for with such a cavalier attitude, the rule of large numbers means that some of AA's decisions will result in terrible outcomes (missing the birth or death of a family member, etc.).
Here's an analogy: let's say you drive very fast every day. Most days, you do so safely, but one day a child steps in front of your car and you don't stop in time. Of course, you didn't know that a child would step in front of your car on that specific day. But, your decision to drive very fast every day means that if you drive 1,000 or 10,000 days, one day your decision to drive very fast will have a terrible outcome. In this case, AA's decision to treat its obligations (ethical if not legal) as optional usually only means a customer misses a meeting, a day of vacation or a child's birthday (which is still bad), but every so often, the impact is much worse. AA surely understands this, but they just don't care.
As for missing the birth of OP's daughter, AA is on the hook (morally if not legally). This is not because they (or OP) knew the delay would result in missing the birth--neither did. However, if you carry 200 million passengers per year and treat your obligation to deliver them to their destination on time and with the service they paid for with such a cavalier attitude, the rule of large numbers means that some of AA's decisions will result in terrible outcomes (missing the birth or death of a family member, etc.).
Here's an analogy: let's say you drive very fast every day. Most days, you do so safely, but one day a child steps in front of your car and you don't stop in time. Of course, you didn't know that a child would step in front of your car on that specific day. But, your decision to drive very fast every day means that if you drive 1,000 or 10,000 days, one day your decision to drive very fast will have a terrible outcome. In this case, AA's decision to treat its obligations (ethical if not legal) as optional usually only means a customer misses a meeting, a day of vacation or a child's birthday (which is still bad), but every so often, the impact is much worse. AA surely understands this, but they just don't care.
Jan 8, 2020, 8:27 am
#48
Join Date: Feb 2016
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I am wondering, though, why the OP thinks the airline should compensate him because of a medical emergency that led to the early birth of his child...what control or responsibility does the airline have on that? To my knowledge, AA has no control over someone's medical conditions, unless their actions cause it.
The OP is asking for compensation because an AA employee overslept and caused a delay that was otherwise avoidable. AA could have activated a reserve FA, but didn’t for whatever reason. Again, completely on them.
If you showed up late to your flight, most airlines try to charge you to rebook. But when a FA does it and it causes revenue pax to misconnect, nothing is due? What an unfair and one-sides relationship.
Anyways, the OP could have made the original flight. If the GA has less attitude and more work ethic, they could have gone onboard and vacated the OP’s seat, but they didn’t care to do so. Probably because they put one of their non rev friends into the seat.
If I were OP, I would contact Parker’s Office and or file a DOT complaint so someone with a brain looks at this. Then, I would assume the person in your seat was a NRSA, and ask AA for a full refund of the entire outbound of the ticket. Their contract was to get you to PUS on your originally booked flights, and chose not to do so to seat an employee flying (basically) for free instead.
If it wasn’t a NRSA, let them come back and say that (but I am 99% certain it was NRSA). But ask for compensation assuming it was.
They had control in multiple cases and failed horribly due to incompetence or apathy. Neither is acceptable. The fact that their errors had an externality of you missing your daughter’s birth just rubs salt in the wound.
Jan 8, 2020, 8:31 am
#49
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However, if you carry 200 million passengers per year and treat your obligation to deliver them to their destination on time and with the service they paid for with such a cavalier attitude, the rule of large numbers means that some of AA's decisions will result in terrible outcomes (missing the birth or death of a family member, etc.).
Jan 8, 2020, 8:35 am
#50
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For a customer on a paid J seat that is possibly making a connection, I would argue the 'upgrade' should wait until the doors are (practically) closed. For empty seats, by all means upgrades should be processed before boarding starts, but every effort should be made to protect a paid seat for a customer that has any chance of making a tight connection.
Processing an upgrade on international requires reticketing, charging the co-pay if it's a mileage upgrade, etc. I think the GAs are in a tight spot when they see a late-arriving connection. I'm sure there's some Murphy's law that as soon as they remove a misconnect and process the seat as an upgrade, the passenger comes running to the gate.
I don't know what the right answer is, in the moment, there are obviously various priorities (paid J pax, EXP on waitlist, on-time statistic) that can conflict. I guess T-15m is a starting point (for losing a seat assignment, and I guess potentially a cabin assignment), but how much flexibility should there be? They could set some threshold where the seat of a potential misconnect can only be released if the actual connection time is, say less than 15 or 20 minutes (from actual arrival of inbound to scheduled departure of outbound). But then seats might go empty.
Regardless, I think the "after-the-fact" needs to be handled much better. They should bend over backwards to get you on another flight in your original class of service and/or they should have more specific guidelines in place regarding downgrade compensation/refunds. Everyone here expects AA to only offer the difference between walk-up Y and the original fare paid (which in many cases could be negative!), and you have to fight for more. The CoC last I checked only mentioned an "appropriate" refund. Well, how about you define that more specifically? How about throw a voucher on top of that? Or a meaningful number of miles?
Jan 8, 2020, 9:30 am
#51
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Have you read any of the upgrade complaint threads recently?!
Processing an upgrade on international requires reticketing, charging the co-pay if it's a mileage upgrade, etc. I think the GAs are in a tight spot when they see a late-arriving connection. I'm sure there's some Murphy's law that as soon as they remove a misconnect and process the seat as an upgrade, the passenger comes running to the gate.
I don't know what the right answer is, in the moment, there are obviously various priorities (paid J pax, EXP on waitlist, on-time statistic) that can conflict. I guess T-15m is a starting point (for losing a seat assignment, and I guess potentially a cabin assignment), but how much flexibility should there be? They could set some threshold where the seat of a potential misconnect can only be released if the actual connection time is, say less than 15 or 20 minutes (from actual arrival of inbound to scheduled departure of outbound). But then seats might go empty.
Regardless, I think the "after-the-fact" needs to be handled much better. They should bend over backwards to get you on another flight in your original class of service and/or they should have more specific guidelines in place regarding downgrade compensation/refunds. Everyone here expects AA to only offer the difference between walk-up Y and the original fare paid (which in many cases could be negative!), and you have to fight for more. The CoC last I checked only mentioned an "appropriate" refund. Well, how about you define that more specifically? How about throw a voucher on top of that? Or a meaningful number of miles?
Processing an upgrade on international requires reticketing, charging the co-pay if it's a mileage upgrade, etc. I think the GAs are in a tight spot when they see a late-arriving connection. I'm sure there's some Murphy's law that as soon as they remove a misconnect and process the seat as an upgrade, the passenger comes running to the gate.
I don't know what the right answer is, in the moment, there are obviously various priorities (paid J pax, EXP on waitlist, on-time statistic) that can conflict. I guess T-15m is a starting point (for losing a seat assignment, and I guess potentially a cabin assignment), but how much flexibility should there be? They could set some threshold where the seat of a potential misconnect can only be released if the actual connection time is, say less than 15 or 20 minutes (from actual arrival of inbound to scheduled departure of outbound). But then seats might go empty.
Regardless, I think the "after-the-fact" needs to be handled much better. They should bend over backwards to get you on another flight in your original class of service and/or they should have more specific guidelines in place regarding downgrade compensation/refunds. Everyone here expects AA to only offer the difference between walk-up Y and the original fare paid (which in many cases could be negative!), and you have to fight for more. The CoC last I checked only mentioned an "appropriate" refund. Well, how about you define that more specifically? How about throw a voucher on top of that? Or a meaningful number of miles?
Jan 8, 2020, 11:32 am
#52
Join Date: Aug 2015
Location: Chicago, IL
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Posts: 184
The OP is not asking for compensation because of the medical emergency.
The OP is asking for compensation because an AA employee overslept and caused a delay that was otherwise avoidable. AA could have activated a reserve FA, but didn’t for whatever reason. Again, completely on them.
If you showed up late to your flight, most airlines try to charge you to rebook. But when a FA does it and it causes revenue pax to misconnect, nothing is due? What an unfair and one-sides relationship.
Anyways, the OP could have made the original flight. If the GA has less attitude and more work ethic, they could have gone onboard and vacated the OP’s seat, but they didn’t care to do so. Probably because they put one of their non rev friends into the seat.
If I were OP, I would contact Parker’s Office and or file a DOT complaint so someone with a brain looks at this. Then, I would assume the person in your seat was a NRSA, and ask AA for a full refund of the entire outbound of the ticket. Their contract was to get you to PUS on your originally booked flights, and chose not to do so to seat an employee flying (basically) for free instead.
If it wasn’t a NRSA, let them come back and say that (but I am 99% certain it was NRSA). But ask for compensation assuming it was.
They had control in multiple cases and failed horribly due to incompetence or apathy. Neither is acceptable. The fact that their errors had an externality of you missing your daughter’s birth just rubs salt in the wound.
The OP is asking for compensation because an AA employee overslept and caused a delay that was otherwise avoidable. AA could have activated a reserve FA, but didn’t for whatever reason. Again, completely on them.
If you showed up late to your flight, most airlines try to charge you to rebook. But when a FA does it and it causes revenue pax to misconnect, nothing is due? What an unfair and one-sides relationship.
Anyways, the OP could have made the original flight. If the GA has less attitude and more work ethic, they could have gone onboard and vacated the OP’s seat, but they didn’t care to do so. Probably because they put one of their non rev friends into the seat.
If I were OP, I would contact Parker’s Office and or file a DOT complaint so someone with a brain looks at this. Then, I would assume the person in your seat was a NRSA, and ask AA for a full refund of the entire outbound of the ticket. Their contract was to get you to PUS on your originally booked flights, and chose not to do so to seat an employee flying (basically) for free instead.
If it wasn’t a NRSA, let them come back and say that (but I am 99% certain it was NRSA). But ask for compensation assuming it was.
They had control in multiple cases and failed horribly due to incompetence or apathy. Neither is acceptable. The fact that their errors had an externality of you missing your daughter’s birth just rubs salt in the wound.
If the OP had just shared his story as, "I missed my connection due to AA and was subsequently downgraded and a gate agent, from my perspective, was not helpful or professional...," this conversation would likely not be much of anything. But that's not how he presented his situation...
Jan 8, 2020, 12:09 pm
#53
Join Date: Aug 2007
Posts: 75
I find it hard to believe there wasn't a simpler routing. Might have been able to get ORD->ICN on Asiana and then ICN->PUS, but requiring B. class is a big complication.
I have sworn off any routing that requires more than one change of plane, and I try to make that change of plane either a drivable distance to the destination or to a hub with multiple routings. Of course, I've only arrived at that strategy after having missed several flights over the years.
I have sworn off any routing that requires more than one change of plane, and I try to make that change of plane either a drivable distance to the destination or to a hub with multiple routings. Of course, I've only arrived at that strategy after having missed several flights over the years.
Last edited by pmiranda; Jan 8, 2020 at 12:24 pm Reason: Fixed typo, thanks MSPeconomist!
Jan 8, 2020, 12:18 pm
#54
Join Date: Jul 2008
Location: PHL
Programs: AA EXP
Posts: 537
Here's an analogy: let's say you drive very fast every day. Most days, you do so safely, but one day a child steps in front of your car and you don't stop in time. Of course, you didn't know that a child would step in front of your car on that specific day. But, your decision to drive very fast every day means that if you drive 1,000 or 10,000 days, one day your decision to drive very fast will have a terrible outcome. In this case, AA's decision to treat its obligations (ethical if not legal) as optional usually only means a customer misses a meeting, a day of vacation or a child's birthday (which is still bad), but every so often, the impact is much worse. AA surely understands this, but they just don't care.
Jan 8, 2020, 12:19 pm
#55
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I find it hard to believe there wasn't a simpler routing. Might have been able to get ORD->ICN on Aviana and then ICN->PUS, but requiring B. class is a big complication.
I have sworn off any routing that requires more than one change of plane, and I try to make that change of plane either a drivable distance to the destination or to a hub with multiple routings. Of course, I've only arrived at that strategy after having missed several flights over the years.
I have sworn off any routing that requires more than one change of plane, and I try to make that change of plane either a drivable distance to the destination or to a hub with multiple routings. Of course, I've only arrived at that strategy after having missed several flights over the years.
BTW, OP started in BOS and was ticketed to connect in NRT rather than ICN to get to PUS. Either routing makes some sense, although taking a nonstop from BOS to Asia and then connecting to PUS would obviously have been better. IME both JFK and LAX tend to have midnight departures to ICN that in the case of JFK arrives around 5 am. I'm not sure how the SEA-ICN nonstop is scheduled, but the MSP and DTW flights tend to leave the USA in the late morning and arrive into ICN in mid-late afternoon. For PUS, there should be flights from both ICN and Gimpo as well as HND in addition to NRT. When I last checked a couple years ago, one could fly from HKG to PUS too, as well as from some major airports in mainland China (but it would be better to avoid the hassle and potential delays).
Last edited by MSPeconomist; Jan 8, 2020 at 12:29 pm
Jan 8, 2020, 12:42 pm
#56
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I absolutely share the OP's frustration (anger?) and would be far less measured in my post than he was. AA caused the delay and should have held his seat knowing when his flight was arriving and that he had a chance to make it. It isn't even a question of delaying the flight since boarding was still under way. Worst possible outcome for AA would have been one empty J class seat.
As for missing the birth of OP's daughter, AA is on the hook (morally if not legally). This is not because they (or OP) knew the delay would result in missing the birth--neither did. However, if you carry 200 million passengers per year and treat your obligation to deliver them to their destination on time and with the service they paid for with such a cavalier attitude, the rule of large numbers means that some of AA's decisions will result in terrible outcomes (missing the birth or death of a family member, etc.).
Here's an analogy: let's say you drive very fast every day. Most days, you do so safely, but one day a child steps in front of your car and you don't stop in time. Of course, you didn't know that a child would step in front of your car on that specific day. But, your decision to drive very fast every day means that if you drive 1,000 or 10,000 days, one day your decision to drive very fast will have a terrible outcome. In this case, AA's decision to treat its obligations (ethical if not legal) as optional usually only means a customer misses a meeting, a day of vacation or a child's birthday (which is still bad), but every so often, the impact is much worse. AA surely understands this, but they just don't care.
As for missing the birth of OP's daughter, AA is on the hook (morally if not legally). This is not because they (or OP) knew the delay would result in missing the birth--neither did. However, if you carry 200 million passengers per year and treat your obligation to deliver them to their destination on time and with the service they paid for with such a cavalier attitude, the rule of large numbers means that some of AA's decisions will result in terrible outcomes (missing the birth or death of a family member, etc.).
Here's an analogy: let's say you drive very fast every day. Most days, you do so safely, but one day a child steps in front of your car and you don't stop in time. Of course, you didn't know that a child would step in front of your car on that specific day. But, your decision to drive very fast every day means that if you drive 1,000 or 10,000 days, one day your decision to drive very fast will have a terrible outcome. In this case, AA's decision to treat its obligations (ethical if not legal) as optional usually only means a customer misses a meeting, a day of vacation or a child's birthday (which is still bad), but every so often, the impact is much worse. AA surely understands this, but they just don't care.
Jan 8, 2020, 5:20 pm
#57
Join Date: Nov 2013
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...or file a DOT complaint so someone with a brain looks at this. Then, I would assume the person in your seat was a NRSA, and ask AA for a full refund of the entire outbound of the ticket. Their contract was to get you to PUS on your originally booked flights, and chose not to do so to seat an employee flying (basically) for free instead.
If it wasn’t a NRSA, let them come back and say that (but I am 99% certain it was NRSA). But ask for compensation assuming it was.
They had control in multiple cases and failed horribly due to incompetence or apathy. Neither is acceptable. The fact that their errors had an externality of you missing your daughter’s birth just rubs salt in the wound.
If it wasn’t a NRSA, let them come back and say that (but I am 99% certain it was NRSA). But ask for compensation assuming it was.
They had control in multiple cases and failed horribly due to incompetence or apathy. Neither is acceptable. The fact that their errors had an externality of you missing your daughter’s birth just rubs salt in the wound.
https://www.transportation.gov/airco...umer-complaint
The least egregious reason was that D0 was more important to the gate agent than helping a customer; the most egregious and in my cynical opinion most likely, is that it was an NSRA.
Jan 8, 2020, 6:30 pm
#58
Join Date: Nov 2014
Posts: 255
I agree 100% with btonkid; skip customer service and go right to the DOT. Corporations like AA have dedicated customer service teams that handle federal complaints, it's going to be one of the quickest and most visible ways to get attention.
https://www.transportation.gov/airco...umer-complaint
The least egregious reason was that D0 was more important to the gate agent than helping a customer; the most egregious and in my cynical opinion most likely, is that it was an NSRA.
https://www.transportation.gov/airco...umer-complaint
The least egregious reason was that D0 was more important to the gate agent than helping a customer; the most egregious and in my cynical opinion most likely, is that it was an NSRA.
He also ended up flying in the class of service that he paid for. No downgrade or refund or compensation is due there. What he should receive is some kind of goodwill gesture since his late arrival was caused by a delay in the arrival of his incoming AA flight.
Everyone has spent so much time focusing on what event was missed or why they couldn’t un-upgrade the passenger who took his business class seat, etc. However, there hasn’t been much discussion about what he could or should request.
Personally, I would ask for 40,000 miles or an AA voucher for the equivalent and take the discussion (back and forth argument with Customer Relations) from there. However, if something along those lines won’t make the OP happy, then it might be best to let it go.
Jan 8, 2020, 7:02 pm
#60
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