AA cust service response
 

Dear Dr. Bonavia:


We appreciate your comments about the change to our standby policy for nonrefundable
tickets. Please allow me to explain what drove American's decision.

Airline seat inventory is a perishable product -- once the plane has departed, we have
lost the opportunity to sell the seat. When a passenger does not show up for their
ticketed flight, we've lost the opportunity to sell that seat to another passenger.
With respect to stand-by passengers, we must have additional staff to handle these
requests and last minute adjustments. Therefore, there are incremental costs
associated with allowing passengers to exchange their tickets or stand by for a
different flight.

In order for us to be able to continue to offer deeply discounted fares during these
difficult economic times, we must provide a better alignment between our costs and the
additional services that passengers require, including the flexibility to stand by on
a non-refundable, discounted ticket. Some carriers do not allow passengers to stand
by with non-refundable tickets. Instead of not allowing stand by at all for
passengers with non-refundable tickets, we chose to retain some flexibility for those
passengers using non-refundable fares who were willing to pay for the additional
benefit by charging the $100 fee.

Again, thank you for contacting us about this issue. We hope to have our customers
understanding and continued loyalty as we move forward in our return to profitability.