AAEmpireState

JFK-SJU, 2/11

Full open bar PDBs with a smile, and coats hung immediately after cabin door closed (it was freezing in NY!). Great flight and fantastic crew.

cmd320

As though they have the option of doing this? Lol indeed...

brc757rr

I had to bite my tongue when she said that.

rjw242

I didn't really read it that way. It can be a nice touch whether or not it's mandatory.

Dr. HFH

^


One of the systemic problems with AA onboard service is the lack of any management hierarchy on board, no ISM or equivalent. So without any type of management presence, there is nothing to stop lazy cabin crew from being lazy.

skylady

There seems to be many opinions on this subject, vs facts. I often hear, "If they don't like it, why not quit". Could the same be true of customers that don't like it? Why not quit? I am not advocating for you to leave AA, but why keep banging your head on the wall if it is so bad? Serious question, and probably ducking

HNL

Just trying to get AA to deliver on service standards. The company tells us one thing, but does not drive home the need to deliver on the promise with employees.

skylady

Exactly.

JonNYC

As long as they're gettin' those free upgrades, they 'ain't goin nowhere.

NotDuncan

Only problem with that is, those free upgrades ain't so happening anymore, at least IME!

LT PLT, I missed an upgrade on a DFW-PHX @ 2 in the afternoon on a Wednesday a couple months ago, booked two months in advance. One data point, I know, but I have several more of them. Is anything more in the wheelhouse for an u/g than a 2 hour flight in the middle of the afternoon on a Wednesday?

cmd320

AA is avoidable to an extent, however the airline is now so large it's responsible for nearly a quarter of the domestic market. When there is that little competition and that much market coverage by a single player, it sometimes becomes difficult to avoid them 100% of the time.

RogerD408

Given there is no management present on-board to monitor this, it is up to the passengers to make the situation known outside the aircraft. Using Twitter does seem to be a good tool to do this. Plus making the posts public will encourage the unknowing passengers to report their service failures as well. And if there are many positive posts, it just might promote more sales in the front cabin (sorry to those wanting upgrades).

Back in August Post #1447 of an archived thread, it was suggested to use a standardized format to make it easy to monitor how they are doing. Using the #PDBServed tag will allow all of us to track how they are doing and prevent them from claiming it's not as bad as we think it is.

ysolde

It bothers the heck out of me, too. There used to be a hypothesis that FAs hung up men's coats and consciously ignored female passengers with coats on our laps. I once sat there with my coat on my lap, my call light on over my head, until they came around to serve lunch. The FA finally asked, "Are you going to keep your coat on your lap?" At which point I pointed to the call light which had been lit up above me for about an hour at that point. She made some remark about how difficult it was to put coats away in the middle of meal service, and i told her I had asked both her and her colleague to put my coat aways since I boarded, and I was the first passenger to board. Ridiculous.

It's somehow comforting to know men get ignored on this issue as much as women do. Infuriating, but comforting, if that makes any sense.

The only times I get my coat hung up consistently, I pay for Five Star Service. Honestly, do premium AA passengers really have to pay extra to receive premium service? Maybe, if you pay for FSS, the FSS rep can serve you an open bar drink of choice before s/he leaves the aircraft. Because at this point, we know the FAs are not going to do it.

BA4EVER

Our problem is that we are married to BA, and thereby attached to AA. BA has gotten us used to flying F around the world for $2K using various upgrade instruments, which can be self-sustaining if you are a frequent flier. If they ever make that harder, we would jump to Air France in a heartbeat out of a direct preference for Delta.

ryan182

I'm doing just that and I have to imagine others are as well. To be clear I'm not completely leaving but I am pushing business that would otherwise have gone to AA to other carriers. I typically buy F (or J intl) which provides quite a bit of freedom though I do try to concentrate on a single alliance, obviously using non-US carriers when possible, but I have to say this year AA is making that difficult. I had probably taken a total of 2 DL flight over the last 15 years/2+MM miles through last year. This year I've done 5 so far, yes the SkyPeso is well the SkyPeso but I don't even have a DL account I just credit the flights to AS which seems to be a decent program.

This mindset is the fundamental problem, I'm guessing that LCC did not had a large % of paid F and when they came to AA that's why they immediately began to trim things - thinking few if any had paid to sit there and that everyone would just be happy with some free slop and a slightly bigger seat. This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, since management thinks everyone is stuck with AA because of the free upgrades they cheapen the product and eventually whats left are people that put up with it since they aren't actually paying to sit there anyways. Paid load factors for F go down, management says "see told you so" and probably makes even more cuts, rinse, repeat. Meanwhile other carriers are focusing heavily on getting pax to pay for their F product rather than upgrade and they seem to realize that a precursor to that is making investments in the product. It seems to be working

I wonder what % of AA flights have a ~60% paid load factor in F? And I would fall down laughing if there's someone in mgmt that thinks they are going to get 70% with the way they are going. Another datapoint would be VX, yes they have a small F cabin but there are times I cannot even book the flight I'd prefer because F is sold out, I'm sure they get the odd upgrade here and there but I suspect their paid % is quite high. They also have, IMO, the best domestic F product (excluding hard product for transcons)...wonder if those things are at all related@:-)