darkrider

I’m just curious, when do AA staff know whether the crew will be available for a flight? I was scheduled on a flight DCA-MIA. The flight was delayed from 810pm to 845pm. I arrived at the lounge at 730pm and I could have gone standby for the earlier flight that was delayed departing at about 815pm. There were only middle seats left so I figured I’d just wait for my flight and get my window seat. 5 mins before boarding the flight gets delayed 2 hrs. The lounge folks told me the captain was unavailable and they were waiting for him to come in on a flight from Dallas. Fast forward and the app says 5 mins to boarding. I asked again are they sure it will board because the boarding time seemed too early. They said yes. No sooner did I walk down did the flight get delayed again because the captain had not landed.

Does AA really not know? Or are they just trying to keep things quiet? It’s more frustrating than anything else because it seems they should be more forthcoming with facts. Thoughts?

Catbert10

Persistent problem with AA. AA's operations center knows where the crew is and has a very good idea of how long a delay really will be. That information is rarely communicated to the front-end systems accessible by passengers, GAs, club agents, FDS, etc. So the announced delay is often times wildly inaccurate. AA is famous for the rolling 15m delay.

VegasGambler

removed

darkrider

Thanks for the thoughts. The communication was really unacceptable. Finally arrived 2-3 hrs hours later only to have no one available to man the bridge and open the door because we arrived so late. 20+ mins of waiting at the gate after this delay. Bad night for AA and worse for me.

hw711

Last flight I was on a couple weeks ago, we boarded and the pilot didn’t show up so we had to deplane and wait for a replacement for 3hours.

roadtriper

Are you familiar with the Acronym SNAFU? maybe it should be SNAAFU!

Justin026

Always a troubling and anxious time, especially with a missing pilot. Part of me wants the pilot to hurry, but I sure don’t want him/her to be frazzled with things like pre-flight checklists and getting ready to taxi and take off!

Intl359Widget

Flight Crews won’t rush through things as they are being paid handsomely unless it’s their go home leg then they’ll most likely do everything to ensure that they don’t time out.

sexykitten7

If you really find it "unacceptable" you can vote with your feet. But I really don't think you'll find other airlines any better in this regard. Sorry you had a bad flight but it happens to all of us.

Raymoland

Catberts answer is probably the correct one but in Irrops things can be in constant motion. For example, AA may have been planning on Captain A operating the flight but for various reasons needed to change to Captain B, who was on the inbound flight. Things can change all the time.

doc4science

That's a greAAt idea! (from AA's Twitter account responding to my "greAAt questions")

Woofbite

Beats me but last year they had boarded half a flight at DFW and the agent came onboard to announce boarding was stopped because they just "discovered" they didn't have a cockpit crew for the flight.
Ended up canceling it and booking this F class revenue on 5:00pm flight the next day. No compensation of course because it was ruled "weather" even though weather was clear over most of the U.S.. May have been raining in Bangladesh..

bakrgby

happened as well to me, wildly annoying but it is what it is

tomj888

Airline operations are like the magician spinning 10 plates in the air all at the same time. Most of the time the person can keep all of the plates spinning. every once in a while stuff happens and a plate falls onto the floor. It happens. I think its remarkable how airlines function and how the system is one IRROPS or weather event from going into the can.

BrianV

Systemic problem at AA for years. I've written some pretty harshly worded messages on Twitter about this. They just do not delay flights when it's clear the flight will 100% be delayed. Then they go to rolling delays, ends up creating anxiety and often you leave the comfort of the Lounge, a restaurant, etc. just to stand around for an hour.

I rant on Twitter often and don't get very far. Here's an example, above this is me posting 6 screenshots of 15 minute delays back to back to back.