AA flight delay with misinformation
 

We were scheduled on AA flight 211 BOS-LAX at 6:05. Awakened with a 2 a.m. text saying flight on time. 4:30 checkin agent said flight was on time. It was not! The pilots were FAA required to get 8 hour rest and so the flight was delayed 3 hours. The crew also was not notified. This is clearly on AA. Why wake people up with text messages when the extra 3 hours sleep and more comfortable environment would have been most welcomed? Inconsiderate of crew and a plane full of passengers.

Likely they had a reserve crew lined up and that did not pan out for one reason or another. I doubt that it was misinformation at the time it was given.

In any event, the flight delay would not have meant that you could sleep in as delays are posted and then evaporate when a reserve crew or other deficiency is cured.

Just FYI, AA always sends a text and app alert at 4 hours prior to the flight, regardless of the time of day. As a frequent early morning flyer, i have set my phone to "do not disturb" because i was tired (literally) of getting these alerts at 3am.

You know these things don't happen in a vacuum, right?

Would you have preferred your pilots to be sleep deprived?

They didn't wake you up for their amusement. Things change. Sometimes very quickly.

Wow, I feel like no one responding to this thread has ever flown AA before.

AA fails to update departure times when they know with absolute certainty that the flight will be delayed all the time. There are countless threads on this board about it, and a general consensus that they are much worse at providing customers and frontline agents with timely information about delays than the competition. Given this general pattern, I have no idea why anyone would assume that in this one particular case they had a really good plan but it all fell apart at the last minute. Much more likely that they knew about the delay but no one cared enough to update the departure time to be helpful to customers.

Having said that, it's not really any comfort to the OP other than to confirm that yes, AA is indeed very bad at this aspect of running an airline. (The bigger problem is actually just how many more delays and cancellations they have than the competition, but that's a different story.)

I don't really understand why people bother to post responses like this since they mostly demonstrate a complete failure of reading comprehension to as opposed to being clever or being a sick burn. No, obviously OP is not saying that the pilots should fly when sleep deprived. OP wants AA to provide timely notifications of delays when AA is fully aware they are going to happen.

This is one of reasons I quit flying AA. I’ve had too many instances where there’s a last minute delay because of pilot and FA timeout rules when they could have seen it coming many hours earlier.

There should be a quick checklist of items when rescheduling a flight; is there a plane, are there pilots, is there a crew, are there bag handlers. It seems like they’re often hoping all of this lines up instead of collecting the information.

Well said. AA is incapable of updating departure times when the inbound aircraft is going to be 800 miles away at the time of departure, why on earth would we assume that they have a robust procedure to account for crew rest?

Second this and jordyn post. AA is the worst major airline in my experience with regards to appropriate communication and reasonable delay notification. They rolling delay strategy is infuriating and misleading, as in several cases, AA knows that this delay is coming long before they announce it.

Two recent examples in the last 10 days of how poorly AA does on handling delays.

2/17 - VPS-DFW. Notice that inbound plane from DFW is leaving late, going through typical rolling delay. Eventually arrival time is pushed back to after proposed departure time for return, but no change from "on time" departure. Finally after scheduled arrival time is move back another hour, AA updates me that my flight is delayed which allows me to rebook through CLT.

2/23 ORD-DCA - 6:30pm get notice that 7:24pm departure is delayed until 8:00, no announcement from GA. 7:25 (boarding time for delayed 8:00 departure) agent makes first announcement of any kind and announces that we are waiting for a part from hanger, will board once part is installed. 7:45 or so, flight delayed until 8:15 no announcement. 8:00 or so, flight delayed until 8:35, no GA announcement. 8:30 (5 minutes from delayed departure time), GA makes second announcement and tells us part has been installed and we will board shortly. 8:35 - start boarding. While boarding departure time change to 9:05, we depart around 8:55. For extra fun, the upgrade list was 10+ deep, no upgrades clear and First Class goes out with 5 empty seats.

You can opt for an email instead or possibly even have a notification pushed to your phone. I get a notification pushed at T-4 of the actual flight but an email of whether it's on time. Although at T-4 On Time is usually meaningless.

This was not a routine flight delay. Because the pilots flew the night b before and were required to get sleep (which I appreciate), AA knew AT LEAST 8 hours before that they wouldn't;t be available to fly.

Not only did the send a text message that the flight was on time WAKING US AT 2 AM, they also failed to notify the crew.

There are lots of things that are out of their control, but this one was a big mistake to the crew, every one of the passengers. Even the agent when we checked in didn't;t know the flight was delayed.

Who has their phones set to WAKE them up every time a text message comes in? Good grief.

You have a legitimate complaint about the delay, but goodness please leave the text message thing out of it when you contact AA. If you chime in asking for compensation they will probably send you a voucher. Take it and move on, this is business as usual.

Not that it helps but, the crew would have known as crew would have informed the dispatch desk the night before, telling them what time they blocked in, what time they were behind the door at the hotel , and therefore what their show time would be the following day.