tjcxx

I just had a quick look on aa.com. It's price. There are plenty of CLT connections, but they are more expensive in PE/WTP than the JFK or PHL connections. Same price in Y though.

Sorry but no insight as to when or if the direct flight comes back.

etiene

Sounds like he should be including some clauses about reasonable expenses during IRROPS for his client contracts then.

guv1976

I'm sorry about all that your husband had to endure on this trip, but I think that you have a misconception as to who is responsible for what when a flight irregularity causes a misconnection.

Regardless of who issued the ticket, when a late arriving BA LHR-PHL flight causes a misconnection, the duty to get the traveler to RDU (whether on AA or some other carrier) and provide duty-of-care (if any) was with BA, not AA. There is no Terminal 2 at PHL, only Terminals A, B, C, D, E, and F, which are all connected airside. The passenger should have spoken with BA -- even if that meant walking back to Terminal A -- if he did not like the re-routing options being offered by AA. That said, it's possible that BA would not have been able to offer anything better than the AA flight to GSO, but at least the passenger might have had some clarity as to whether there would be reimbursement for the ground transportation from GSO to RDU. When a passenger misses an AA flight due to no fault of AA's, I would not expect AA to do much -- and that's not a criticism of AA. The AA agent at PHL might not even have been aware of BA's duty-of-care obligations in this case, but those were BA's obligations, not AA's.

You saw all of this in operation when the RDU-JFK AA flight was delayed: AA -- not BA -- was responsible for the re-accommodation.

If getting some rest today was the priority over getting home at the earliest possible time, your husband could have asked to be accommodated on a later flight to LHR -- or maybe even one tomorrow morning -- if he wanted to get some real sleep in a hotel room. If getting home at the earliest possible time was the priority, it sounds like he got the best possible option.

I hope that the rest of his travels are uneventful.

corporate-wage-slave

You were trying to use the day flight to LHR, which is laudable, and Saturday flying is less likely to be problematic on the whole. But today it just didn't work, irrops are just the sorts of tings that happen. In my trips to RDU I have used PHL, JFK, BOS. My trips tend to be linked to Washington DC so DCA is a nice link if starting from there, but CLT is indeed the big sister next to RDU, and so RDU-CLT-LHR is the easiest connection and the moment, but PHL and JFK are perfectly valid routes. AA has been downturning its JFK services of late, favouring its codeshare with jetBlue, which isn't part of the Joint Business Agreement.

AA have been pushing back the direct flight, it was supposed to restart in February, then it was pushed back to April and now it seems June. That was a pretty neat service so I hope it survives.

Flying Machine

Personally, I would like to hear from the Mr.

Mrs seems to try to armchair TA these journeys. Perhaps the Mr could make a guest appearance to let us know his thoughts as the passenger.

If he has clients, he is quite capable, however in my opinion the Mrs. is enabling him. I know this is coming off a little bit indifferent on my part, I don’t intend it to be that way just trying to have a Mrs understand that she seems to have more concerns than the traveler (and different requirements)

Glad it’s going to work out in the end as we most thought it will (Its JFK!) However, please don’t complain about discomfort if you’re unwilling to step in and pay for lounge access, day room etc. The poster above explanation of duty of care was spot on

LapLap

I think you’re confusing me having a misconception with me having no idea!

That’s why I’m asking. MrLapLap literally didn’t care who he’d have to deal with, he just wanted to avoid cross crossing terminals so he asked the people he came across in the sequence of coming across them. The priority for him was to avoid senseless and frustrating travelling throughout an airport, particularly after the last flights had arrived and departed.

If I’d told Mr LapLap to go back to Terminal A in PHL to see someone from BA with him having already gone through security, collected his bags and rushed to whichever Terminal it was the RepAir flight had left from he would have told me to eff off. Would there have even been anybody there, anybody landside? I don’t believe so, why would there be? It was late.
Knowing what SHOULD be done is not the same knowing what CAN be done. He got to Raleigh that night and his booked accommodation for the week wasn’t cancelled because he was a no show. Impossible to imagine a better outcome had BA been involved… that’s if he could find someone to take responsibility.

LapLap

You and MrLapLap have very different definitions of the term “discomfort”. Both myself and my husband are not exactly neurotypical, but we understand each other’s parameters perfectly.

There’s a real theme for events that happen in hindsight. I’m sorry to have raised the LHR-PHL-RDU trip here.

Flying Machine

earlier in this thread you were so accommodating to others for their opinion. Now that you have a level of comfort, please don’t lash out at others if you’re unsure of what they area thinking (as a question)

You have no idea what my level of discomfort is, so you cannot compare it to the Mr. I don’t normally travel AA or BA, but I find your recent posts as being unappreciative towards others. I think it’s better go ask. This thread is not Omni or political in nature

guv1976

Just a historical note: RDU used to be a hub for AA:

https://www.rdu.com/airline-highligh...ican-airlines/

CLT had been a hub for the old Piedmont Airlines (PI), which was headquartered in North Carolina; Piedmont merged with USAir, which was subsequently rebranded as US Airways, and the hub at CLT continued. US, of course, merged with AA and opted to trade as AA going forward, so now CLT is an AA hub.

krispy84

What’s the lineage of the AA RDU - LHR flight? I’ve got corporate contract in the back of my mind, but unsure which. Was thinking BoA, but they’re in Charlotte.

corporate-wage-slave

IBM, big pharma (R&D sites in the Triangle and a big GSK presence), academia and the military-security establishment. The LHR-RDU service is one of AA's longest running routes.

work2fly

Might I suggest to OP to post in the AA forum to see if someone would guest the Mr. into the Flagship lounge for a shower and proper F&B?

We're a community and I would certainly extend the invitation if I were passing through JFK today.

guv1976

How late was it? The BA LHR-PHL aircraft do not overnight at PHL; they are turn-arounds, with the later flight departing after 10:00 pm. Now, if walking back to BA would have meant missing the last PHL-GSO flight on AA, I agree that dealing with AA was probably the best option in that situation. But doing so may have jeopardized your chances of being reimbursed for the GSO-RDU ground transfer. So you're kind of picking your poison.

At least you and your husband now have a better understanding of who is responsible for what in the case of (future) irregular-operation situations.

LapLap

Thanks for the thoughtful response here. I don’t tend to have an innate comprehension of things and need to struggle to conceptualise and intellectualise most of my understanding and skills. Unfortunately, air travel is like “whack a mole”; for every batch of problems I learn to identify and deal with, another one surfaces. I try and ascertain what the problem is, why it’s there, what should be done to avoid it, what the pitfalls are of the established recommendations to avoid the problem and how to mitigate these secondary problems that can come from avoiding the initial one.

This is all precious data for me. Have internalised much of it, taken onboard and book-marked the rest (always good to know what people different from me would do), hopefully I am now ready to whack-a-mole more problems before they break ground. Since I tend to travel with a minor (who is also autistic) the advice for the RDU-JFK-LHR trip has been more valuable to me than will likely be realised by all of you have contributed.
I’ve learned quite a bit in this thread, just as my knowledge was getting worn out and rusty.

rjburns

The whole experience seems standard AA service recovery. i.e. little to none.

The best idea I've seen here is for someone to guest him into the Flagship lounge. The Flagship lounge at JFK is good.