born sleepy

Got an email that a DFW/ATL late night segment was canceled. Was rebooked for 7am the next morning. That's a big fat nope and I'm quite sure there would not have been a hotel voucher in the offing.

Why weird? I don't care if I connect in CLT/ORD/elsewhere, Why would the system insist on keeping the same routing?

I was able to change to a CLT routing on the phone, and rather quickly. I was dreading the "your expected wait time is 95 minutes"...

redtop43

Be grateful for elite status, that got you through before the election.

dls25

The autorebook rebooks by segment not by itinerary. It will never change the connection city.

UKtravelbear

You booked an A-B and the bot put you on one.

It dosen't know you'd be happy with a connection somewhere else or you rneed to be in B by a certain time.

It's just working to get people booked onto alternative flights as soon as possible that match the original itinerrary.

That it didn't give you the itin you wanted dosen't make it weird.

TomMM

And sometime in the future there will be a post about an “itinerary change weirdness” complaining about a non-stop that got changed to a connection. Why would AA’s system change my routing! It should be obvious from my original booking that I wanted a nonstop flight!

galaticos

System just works on segments and subsequent impacts - not earlier - if your first segment had cancelled/postponed - it would have changed whole trip (i'm sure routing would have stayed same)... its just the coded logic.. hence the human touch is valuable!!

I had earlier in summer SAN-DFW-IAH.. SAN-DFW late so it pushed DFW-IAH to next morning.. called EXP and since I had a IAH-ORD for next evening.. they were able to just get me SAN-ORD that night as I wanted after delay..

Carolina2Cali

Yea, AA is obsessed with segments. Sure, the rare person might have a plan on their layover (I once met my biological father for the first time) but most people not using SkipLagged just want to get to the final destination as close to the same time and duration as possible.

The way the systems work for same-day standby/confirmed, rebookings, and often (but not always) the volunteer to miss your flight in advance option, it really just likes people to go leg for leg on the same plan. In this instance, for once, humans beat computers.

born sleepy

Not helpful.

The fact that the change had me sleeping in the airport overnight or in a hotel at my expense? Yeah, weird, bad, no good. I *know* it's a bot, thanks for pointing out the very obvious; it's not a very smart one.

And if you're going to scold me, use a damn spell-checker.

born sleepy

not helpful.

writerguyfl

Exactly this. It's not possible for programmers to account for every scenario. Sometimes the rigidity of the decision-making processes used by software create a new itinerary that wouldn't be something a human would select as the best option.

But for all it's flaws, this sort of automation certainly has benefits even when the outcome is less than ideal.

In olden days, these broken itineraries would sit in a queue waiting for a human being to fix them. In the meantime, tickets would continue being sold on every potential alternative itinerary. By the time a human intervenes, the replacement options might be limited.

Today, an alternative gets booked automatically and the passenger is notified right away. If that alternative isn't great, this can happen:

As systems go, I much prefer the automated rebooking, even if it's not 100% perfect.

USFlyerUS

If they wanted to take this to the next level, they could let one store preferences in their AAdvantage profile -- e.g., rebooking on a connection is preferable to an overnight, rebooking to an earlier departure is ok if within x hours, rebooking so that one stays in their current cabin is preferable to a downgrade if such options exist within x hours, etc. The algorithm may not always be able to meet one's preferences, but it could be programmed to take them into account. I'm not aware of any airline offering this level of intelligence, but it would be a nice touch, even if it's limited to certain FF tiers.