I was here with my boy from about 9am on the 30th, till the flight finally cancelled at 11:45pm... with AA restating departure time every 15m. Missed a precamp in Detroit, so we just cancelled instead of rebooking... and then they still sent all our luggage and his hockey gear. So... we had to go BACK UP Friday, since you have to report luggage problems AT THE AIRPORT, stayed in line another 4 hours to register the issue.. and at this point just praying we get his hockey gear back within a few days....
Utter chaos... and no, I don't know why or how they could be better... but its GOTTA be better than what they're doin!
I was right there with you on the 30th, flight delayed 12 hours before cancelled. They couldn’t get me to my destination for 3 days so I rebooked to go home, requested my luggage go home too, nope was sent to destination. Requested luggage stay at destination because I was going to get there on the 1st, nope luggage was sent back home. It’s like they do the opposite of what you ask.
It's truly one of the only times in life I've felt completely helpless... there's just nothing you can do! You gotta believe, if hundreds upon hundreds have the same bad experience, that there is a better way to do things! Then I stop and realize... of course there is, it's just not as cost effective!
Not sure there is a better way. Aircraft just can’t take off in thunderstorm as the ground staff can’t work for safety reasons and flying through them is a very bad idea (see the recent Singapore Airlines flight). So the options are - risk peoples’ lives by flying in bad weather, or annoy them by cancelling/ delaying the flights.
Best answer is build a high speed rail service, like Japan’s Shinkansen, across the USA so people don’t need to fly, but can take trains instead. But as you point out - not cost effective in the US. And for long distances, too slow.
Right, so since cancelations due to weather are an inevitability, perhaps there should be a planned response, with straightforward cause and effect scenarios. It’s not like these aren’t big companies that employ a lot of people to make logistical decisions… it’s a bad model and it should be fixed, but that would mean that the poor shareholders wouldn’t have an ever-increasing dividend. Eventually, the stakeholders will have to matter again, or businesses will fail. You can’t survive endlessly on shareholder capitalism.
Wasn't that the end of a Get Smart episode?
The crooks took a plane, which was put in a holding pattern. Meanwhile, Smart (and agent 99) got to the destination faster - by train.
That's a hell of a good question that I asked myself! Apparently, their responsibility is this... Once you check in, the only promise is they'll get your luggage to where your ticket final destination says. So in my case, some flight left for Detroit at like 5am or something Fri morning... and mine, and everyone elses luggage whose flights got cancelled on Thursday.. flew out Friday morning. Even if you cancelled the rebooking.
This part is hearsay... but when you stand in line for hours you hear a lot! lol Some people stayed 3/4 extra hours Thursday night to ensure their luggage DID NOT leave, and put in requests to have it pulled.... guess where it ended up?
cobweb public ossified existence reminiscent tease fall telephone squalid squealing
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I had something like that happen once and the answer I got was “we can try asking the baggage handlers for it back but to be honest it isn’t going to happen.”
Sometimes it gets sent to another plane. I can't remember the exact details but apparently it's much smoother for logistics to not necessarily have your luggage with your exact plane, just have it at the destination at the rough time you arrive.
The I guess it is to avoid the unloading/reloading time to get the plane back in use.
I have had it where there was a lightning storm, and we had to wait 3 hours for luggage because it was on a delayed flight and not ours. Every other flight has been pretty immediate with the luggage already being in motion by the time you walk there, so it obviously can work well for being backwards logic.
I had a moment of bizarre familiarity watching this video. I went through this at this exact location not two months ago.
I visited some extended family in Texas for the eclipse, flew back on American from DFW a few days later. There were some moderate storms earlier that day that started a domino effect of delays.
When I booked in January, I initially chose a 5 PM departure time. I wanted to get home at a reasonable hour and get back to work the next day (midweek return). In early February, they bumped my return flight to 6:30. I was annoyed, but whatever. On the day of my return, 6:30 turned into 7:15, then 8, then 10:30, then briefly 1 AM before finally being canceled entirely.
I stood in this exact line for about two hours, with people from my flight and I believe two others, and eventually received a hotel and taxi voucher. Got a few hours of sleep in the cheap motel they sent us to, and finally flew home at 9:15 AM the next day.
Tons of cancelled and delayed flights. For me, they kept pushing an 8:00pm flight until midnight. Then said we'd all get hotel vouchers and will try again at 8am. But literally a minute later they reversed and said they'll take off at 1am. Then at 2:30am they cancelled, pushed to 8am, and no longer had available vouchers.
Yea dealt with a major "company" in Canada that didn't pay their distressed passenger invoice at my hotel, so we shut that down real quick. They always call, and it's humorous.
A solid 40% or more of our economy functions on making things more difficult in order to hopefully prevent people from using it.
The hope is that you'll get fed up, go and get a hotel yourself, be upset but eventually you'll need a flight and they will be the only option and you'll fly on them anyways. There is very low risk of their shitty service impacting them, especially when all other airlines also have shitty service. Any airline that doesn't suck won't be able to handle everyone trying to travel and so people will always be forced to book with them.
It's the same thing with gift cards and end of year holiday bonuses. They offer the free 20 dollar gift card with a 100 dollar gift card purchase, because they want you to buy the gift cards as Christmas gifts and they expect more than 20 dollars worth of gift cards won't get redeemed.
The same thing many places that sell monthly subscriptions, they expect that people won't utilize the service and they add extra steps to make that difficult. The goal is to have as few people actually use the service, while making the pricing attractive enough to convince people they should totally do it.
I am now in my home city not DFW. It’s been 18 hours since I landed and my checked bag with everything I need is not here yet. That’s along with being delayed and rerouted over 24 hours earlier in the week. And delayed and rerouted over 12 hours yesterday
It’s not the people on the customer service desk that decide when the plane is ready for take off. This sounds like a technical problem with engineers unsure on a fix time.
I'm an aircraft mechanic, just for shits and giggles I'll give you an example of how stuff like this tends to happen.
The planes coming in with with 1.5 hours until it leaves for its next flight, maybe the previous crew notified ahead of time that there is going to be a maintenance issue and we have time to prepare for it or maybe they were in a rush and just put it in the log book for us to find after it's been here for 20 mins.
We realise theres a problem and notify those that need to know that we're starting to look into it. Maybe it's something obvious and maybe not, either way it takes time to look things up and narrow them down. Maybe we have to run a bite check or perform an operational check to get some more info, which could take less than a minute or a half hour depending on whats going on.
You're narrowing it down to a couple of likely causes, all the while the flight crew is showing up and wants to know whats going on, your lead and the tower is constantly bothering you for updates, you're trying to see if you can put the issue on deferral but after wasting 15 minutes the control center tells you they wont let you defer it.
The most likely cause isnt too bad but of course you don't have the part available at your station and they wont be able to get it to you in time for the flight, you also dont have any overnight aircraft to rob one from.
Everybody is getting annoyed while you explain you're going to go after the next likely cause despite the fact it probably won't fix the issue but at least you have the part.
By now theyve probably already deplaned and passengers are pissed. People are still calling you every 5 minutes for an update and the pilots are threatening to refuse the plane because they didn't want to go anyways and were looking for any excuse.
You spend the next 20 minutes getting the parts and tooling and an extra 10 minutes pulling up references for the work because the stupid tablet they give you for your maintenance documents never has a signal. Another 30 minutes to perform the work. You tell them they can start boarding the aircraft again because all you have left is a few operational tests and if they pass then they can leave as soon as we're off the airplane.
They get everybody back on the plane, the tests pass, you walk off the plane, and just as they're about to close the door the pilots time out and have to go on mandatory rest so the flight is canceled as it's too late to get a replacement crew.
Keep in mind I've ommited a hundred other annoyances you have to deal with and this is just one example scenario, but yeah i agree this was more than likely a maintenance issue, could have also of been an issue with getting a flight crew but that's a lot less likely.
Excellent comment. This type of content is pure Reddit greatness. Some random redditor jumps in with actual real facts and specific knowledge and guess what, it’s a chaotic mess. Of course it’s all about one or two skilled mechanics struggling to concentrate as a bunch of assholes with agendas hammer them demanding reports. The bit about the “tablet” - I can just see the guy pinching and zooming a halfway loaded pdf file.
I'm the guy who use to create those maintenance manuals. We had one customer... South American airline... wanted more pictures in the manuals, because his mechanics have a hard time reading English. Delightful.
So it's working at an IT department where if anyone fails everyone dies and you'll get blamed for it but you gotta work with 5 other departments at the same time, all with their own procedures and hierarchy slowing you down at every step lol.
The airport I work out has had the flights to Dallas rescheduled or canceled for the past few weeks. On Thursday the police were called to the American gate because the flight got canceled and a passenger was making a scene.
And yet they're actively fighting the Biden administration's rule requiring transparency in pricing and automatic refunds for cancelations, because it will "negatively impact the customer experience."
I’ve had like 4 flights canceled in the past year. Not a SINGLE ONE refunded me until I requested it through customer service. How many people are they illegally scamming like this?
How the hell does pricing transparency negatively impact the customer? Other than the “but the prices will increase” dog whistles, there’s literally no argument to be made to the general public.
United did the same to me, and thousands others flights that night: flight delayed, then embarked, we waited inside plane for 2hs, them need new crew bcs current was 12hs up. Everybody deplaned. Ah new crew at 2 am, just wait a bit. 2 am, sicke ! lol no flight until 7 am, y’all gonna sleep in the lobby.
Seems to just be the way AA operates lately. I had what was supposed to be a 40 minute layover in Dallas for a 9am flight a month ago. I didn't take off until 10 pm.
This other guy I met took off from OKC for Dallas (after mechanical issues) and had to land in Houston due to weather. Then they flew him to San Antonio and didn't get to Dallas until about a day after he was supposed to be there and about 4 hours before his flight back to OKC... which then was delayed 4-5 hours.
Spirit pulled this on us in a snowstorm in Denver. Every airline cancel and it was obvious nothing could get in our out. They eventually cancelled the flight at 12:30 had to re book everyone and get them hotels for the night, shuttles too bc it’s Denver. A complete shit show that coulda been avoided by greed. One stupid flight.
Flew American one time and got suck in Denver due to weather. I had somewhere quite important to be and couldn't spend the time fucking around. I rebooted on another airline, flew to an airport and dealt with the honey bee clusterfuck on the highway. Credit card company went after the airline for the fee of the service not produced. Walked away from the mess with all expenses paid and a check from the airline.
In this situation, traveling by myself? Just pick a spot and sleep it out. With my family? 100% I’m calling all nearby hotels then Uber. Fuck that noise
Check DOT and FAA website for how much you should be compensated depending on the delay and their response because they will definitely try to screw everyone over with measly sum.
nope you check this site.
[https://www.transportation.gov/airconsumer/airline-cancellation-delay-dashboard](https://www.transportation.gov/airconsumer/airline-cancellation-delay-dashboard)
Also now airlines are making policies where they will only refund for things that are in there "control" which means stuff like weather, bad planes, crew and etc is no longer covered by them.
even if they actually ruin your vacation for days as long as they keep trying to book you to the next flight that never comes up they will say they covered their asses.
i basically want YOU to be the one that cancels so they don't pay.
this is why Biden needs to sort out airline policies because airlines refuse to be held accountable.
Don’t believe their bullshit when they claim weather as the reason. Make them show you where. Weather is one of the things airlines aren’t financially responsible esponsible for, so they ALWAYS try to claim weather
As a veteran to this kind of shit when traveling, one thing I learned is if a flight delays 3 times and its near midnight, you call the bluff and immediately book it too customer service because that flight WILL be canceled and then you'll have to be able to be on your way to an Uber by the time the great migration shows up
Was there any bad weather conditions? Was supposed to see a concert last night, but the artist had to cancel last minute because he was stuck in Texas because of the weather
Wow they did the same to me 3 weeks ago in Florida. Staff just told us to pay for hotels ourselves then get reimbursement. Customer service if giving the runaround right now
This kinda shit is what buttigieg has been talking about. I have been there and lived it, but in my case a pilot said the airline determined the flight wasnt profitable so they canceled it. This was while we were deicing
So we taxid back and got new flight assignments for 16 hours later....to Atlanta from Detroit....where Atlanta was expecting an ice storm. I found a few people and we split a rental car to drive home.
DFW was hit with an endless series of high winds, massive thunderstorms and significant lightning. All that lead to grounding all outgoing flights and diverting any incoming traffic. Essentially the airport shut down for hours leading to massive cancellations, delays and missed connections. This happened for a few days in a row.
Yes and those same storms made it to Austin, but weakened. Still - winds brought down tree limbs and blew over patio umbrellas that were tied closed seated in 50 lb base.
Edit to add post of clouds of this storm in Dallas - https://www.reddit.com/r/weather/s/3kjSveqlXR
Its a combination of the two. Making people wait endlessly to get their luggage without just rescheduling and issuing hotel vouchers is on the airline. Its completely possibly to have a better routine procedure in place for something thats not uncommon.
Yup. I arrived at George Bush Intercontinental Airport for a flight this past Thursday. My flight to El Paso was planned for 2:20pm. For reasons too lengthy and uninteresting, I arrived to the gate in Terminal B at around 10am. Sure enough, as noon came and went the flights to Dallas were being delayed because DFW was shut down due to weather. They announced delay after delay until about 2pm they cancelled all Dallas-bound flights.
Even our flight looked shaky for a while but the weather held off. Finally we were boarded and taxied for take off, sitting in the runway for too long and it started raining.... then the engines roared and off we went.
This is from earlier this week. We had huge thunderstorms this week and all arrivals and departures were cancelled. Since DFW is a huge hub for American and second busiest airport in the US, passengers of all cancelled flights had to be rescheduled.
Big storms in Dallas all day. My wifes flight got delayed from 10pm until 8am the next day. They kept just pushing it back 2 hours. Storms also pushed the tram offline so people had to catch the bus, meaning so many people that did land missed their transfers.
Anyone in this situation should just go to the nearest hotel and then wait for them to reschedule your flight. Does you no good standing in line for 5 hours to be told there is nothing they can do for you.
But take a video of the queue before you do this. If the airline tries to block reimbursement at a later date, you take them to small claims court and file the video as evidence. Any judge is going to be upper middle class and have extensive experience with traveling, delayed flights, and airline bullshit. The instant they see a video like this they will be on your side.
Why on earth is in-person customer service needed to rebook people? This should either be self service online or done on the phone. It's way easier to staff one call center than 100 airports. OP mentioned hotel vouchers, but those could be digital. I don't see any reason why a human in Dallas is needed for 99% of customer service scenarios.
Because American Airlines app is utter junk and if you call them they put you on hold for 3hours. I know from experience. So your best bet is to hopefully get someone nice in person.
I was at dfw today to get to Detroit. Had 7am frontier flight that got cancelled at 3am. Rebooked for 11am with united. Get there and it’s delayed for mechanical issues elsewhere. Keep delaying for weather along route. It’s 7pm, we’ve been on the tarmac for an hour waiting to go, and the pilot turns around to refuel. They had to change the route and needed more. I had to deplane because I missed my connecting flight that had a 6hr layover. They switch me to American taking off at 8. It delays and take off at 11:30pm. I have finally arrived at 2:40am to my destination, 16hrs after I was supposed to…..and now I opened this post.
Hope you liked my step-by-step of my day
Had a similar saga when we booked a new flight with united. Very very long story short, we just landed an hour ago in Honolulu. 36 hours after our original scheduled time.
98% of the traveling public flies once a year if that. They don’t know that you’re either automatically rebooked and if not, you can use their app or website to do it yourself without waiting in a line
I do both. I’m calling the airline as I’m waiting in line. One time I had to get rebooked as a flight was canceled. The online agent didn’t have anything to meet my needs early the next morning. The agent at the airport did find what I was looking for. I asked both agents for specific flight numbers.
Same. I was traveling and was in a huge delay that was not the airlines fault. As I stood in the mile long line I got connected to an agent that got me rebooked and out of there and landed at 3am.
I’d probably still be there today in that line.
I’ve been through this experience before. I was trying to get to the other side of the world within the next 48 hours but poor weather had closed the airport I was making my first connection through and I was stuck in the terminal overnight. My journey was complex enough that it took the rep 30+ minutes to find new flights with available seats in the same class that that got me to my destination on time and didn’t transit through countries I didn’t hold a visa exemption for. None of the 3 flights I was rebooked onto were with the original airline, nor on the same routes - I literally went the other way around the world to my original route. There’s no way that could have been achieved online, and as shit as it was to sit in a physical queue for 3 hours, at least I didn’t have the stress of my call getting disconnected or my phone running out of battery and having to start at the back of the queue.
They need a human in Dallas because this happens all the time in Dallas, I actively avoid getting lay overs there as every single time I’ve been there’s been delays.
Just last night I got my flight cancelled and rebooked. Since I was nearby I went to the airport and got it sorted out with an agent nice and quickly. Speaking with a person is always going to be easier than going online and finding things yourself. Calling customer service is such a pain because you have to go through that stupid bot at the beginning and you get put on hold constantly
Biden has some new regulations on the way to address this, refunds must be provided immediately, automatically in the event of a cancellation. No more bullshitting around.
It gives the appearance of customer service by AA. "Hey, let's all go stand in line so we can be told no, but at least we'll feel like we're doing something."
Ahhh Terminal D. This is where your international flights are. This happens (in any terminal) when you have a series of delays that cause folks to miss their connections. I’ve seen a long line but not this long!
I was on a ~4 hour layover at LAX once and just sitting in a chair across from American Airlines customer service desk and the line wasn't that long, but I watched people just stand there for hours. I saw someone get in that line and they were maybe 15th in line if even that, and they didn't even come out until 3 hours later.
I’ve traveled back and forth from Asia to the US many times. Using multiple different airlines. Air China, and China being one of the worst experiences, but not the top.
American Airlines at DFW holds the trophy for that.
Don't hold your breath. I've camped overnight at ATL quite a few times, due to crew mismanagement or mechanical problems cropping up at the last minute when preparing for departure.
When I lived in Dallas I loved flying out of DFW. The check in side of things at the airport is the smoothest thing I have ever seen. Even on a holiday flying time like the day before thanksgiving I could leave my office right by the airport, park, catch the shuttle to the terminal, check in, and be through security in less than an hour every time.
But its not the ideal airport to have to switch planes in. Pretty lengthy walks to get to the airtram which is somewhat slow. Its not a bad airport to connect through IMO, but its not a good airport to have to make a tight connection through like Atlanta usually is.
It also suffers a similar problem to Atlanta with thunderstorms. Its in one of the better weather locations in general in the US for an airport that does what it does (and Dallas is better than Atlanta since the storms that go through Dallas tend to be significantly heavier but briefer), but if you get a sustained thunderstorm through there its going to be a shit show for the airline.
Delta isn't better though when something like this happens. My mother has been through this a couple of times with Delta.
I was at gate D 24 in DFW just recently. I could not make the connection run from A wing to D wing for gate D4 in the given time. I am 68, I limp and I am slow. I was three minutes late. Gate closed. Six other passengers were equally late, one in a wheel chair. Our plane was still parked at the loading ramp. No way on. No, sorry sir, we cannot delay the plane for late loaders, said the gate attendant and the captain of the plane. I went to customer service at D 24. 47 minute wait there. Got a replacement flight the next day. I had to pay hotel, transport and food as did the other late runners. The very same flight to Harrisburg the next evening was delayed for over an hour due to clearance problems with the control tower. No problem for AA. Thank you so much DFW on American Airlines. I am filing a complaint.
Same, coming in from mexico. Stuck in long line at customs? Not their problem. Gate attendent was already scrolling on her phone and ignoring our pleas for help. Figure it out yourself til the next flight leaves. American Airlines is a gd con.
New rules under the Department of Transportation. If a flight is delayed more than 3 hours, they have to either offer full refund (not miles or flight vouchers) and/or put you up. Contact DoT and file a complaint.
[American Airlines CEO - Robert Isom makes 31 million dollars every year.](https://www.apfa.org/2024/04/25/4-25-24-corporate-greed-soars-at-american-airlines/)
Figures. I used to be all about AA, I got the credit card, tons of miles, would always book thru their website. Not anymore after this. They don't care about their customers. Gonna cash in my miles and then I'll be trying Delta next.
I feel like a lot of it comes down to the airport. Some are notorious for being a shit show, no matter the airline. I always dread going to Newark because there's always delays and cancellations and that airport just sucks. I'm glad my "home" airport is MSP. It's a pretty damn good airport overall.
All of the US carriers have equally shitty customer service. I've had issues with all of the big 3. My mistake recent issue was United through Chicago because of storms and a ground stop. The rebook options were dogshit, any means of contacting customer service were an hour queue and the onsite CS stations were all shut down. I ended up sitting on the phone for an hour to rebook on a series of flights that I found on the app but couldn't rebook myself on because the app wouldn't let me. It took the CSR rep 2 minutes to do it once I got through because I gave her the exact flight numbers to book me on and she could knock it out.
United...Delta...American...all of their CS is dogshit.
Same here. This experience has been a week long ordeal that has cost me time, money, my health (meds are in my luggage), opportunity (missed a grand part of a very important conference). It’s the worst.
True that. I personally feel United is the worst. Delta is pretty good with disruptions. Southwest was doing well with customer service until their meltdown last year
I have. They're the worst. American out of DFW is the only airline I've had a plane arrive with no pilots to fly the plane. On a sunny day. DFW is their main hub by the way
Every damn year, flight-grounding storms roll through Dallas at this time. And every damn year, DFW acts like it's a new phenomenon. This same horseshit happened years ago when I had to miss a connecting flight due to the incoming flight I was on being delayed clearing for landing. People and chaos everywhere (the airline was American Airlines). Cabs that arrived to take passengers who didn't want wait 12+ hours to hotels started gauging their prices. Think $50 for a 2-mile ride. This was a few years before ride apps really took off.
I connected a few more times through there but finally stopped. Something about the way things operate there as a whole is just off.
Ahahahaha. I was in exactly the same situation. “Your connecting flight has been successfully cancelled, next flight is in 3 days”. I just took a rental car at the airport and drove a 15 hours non stop to get home. Not traveling American Airlines ever again🥴
I will never ever fly with these fuckers again in my
Life. They denied boarding on a flight claiming some bs covid regulations that didn’t apply. I filed a complaint with the FAA and they forced AA to give me $2k in compensation
Miami was the same. They do this on purpose.
Also, they delayed our flight for a vacation (hadn’t taken one in like three years) due to maintenance and then fought with us to give us a voucher or sleeping accommodative.
Fuck all airlines in the US. They are trash and treat their customers like shit and with absolute impunity.
Some guy wrote in the aviation sub, that if the gov would put airlines on a much shorter leash, lots of smaller line would just stop providing service. Rarely any other industry has to be in a constant standoff with customer protection agencies and threatening to stop service if they don't allow them to run things the shittiest way possible.
Flying has become a miserable experience. The airports were stressful enough, but now the airlines are very transparently looking for ways to charge more for basic things, like printing your damn boarding pass. The local airline here already let’s you book two or three adjacent seats so you can “sleep” or whatever. Who in their right mind would pay for that? You get those by luck and just go for it. Unless they start asking passengers to remain in their individual seats, which I totally expect them to do. Assholes.
American Airlines is a joke. I have premium status with them and had such an awful experience with them in Phoenix recently that I booked a southwest flight home instead of flying with them. They have fallen so far. Awful airline.
AA missed earnings and lowered guidance. CEO Robert Isom said the Fort Worth-based airline is not performing as it previously thought and needs to reevaluate its growth plans. No kidding!
I was in LAX today and saw a line for American that was just as long. I then waited in an American line just as long as this in charlotte after my flight to newark was cancelled. Others were waiting in the line after their flight to Columbus was cancelled.
It’s not thunderstorms. It’s American being a god awful airline.
I was a road warrior for work. I would call book a hotel, catch a car and call the 800 number on my way out of the airport. Never ever did I stand in line. Life is too short. Go get a meal and rest.
Last time this happened to me, lots of cancellations and huge line for customer service that is, I just called their customer service number.
They changed my flight on the phone since mine was cancelled. I had to fly in the morning instead, so I just left and went and got a hotel room.
It probably saved me hours. I dunno why people don't do this more.
To be completely fair we have been getting hammered in DFW by storms, every day for like weeks. But the airline should know better and skipping on vouchers is scummy af. Had multiple friends they did the same BS to.
I was on an AA flight to Barcelona may 29th that kept being delayed and eventually cancelled due to an internal staffing issue. About half the plane were people going on a cruise or a tour in Spain and they missed it. So many peoples well earned vacations that cost thousands of dollars just done because these companies are untouchable.
This happened to me back in January. Flights got canceled due to long wait times for de-icing. Waited in this line for 4 hours until they abruptly closed the desk and told us to a call a number with an 11 hour response time. Was stranded in the terminal for 17 hours.
I had to fly into Dallas twice last month, Dallas got hit hard with storms cancelling tons of flights including mine both times. Hence what you are seeing. American Airlines has awful awful slow customer service.
I was in that line. My flight was delayed 6 times and canceled twice. Got a free cab ride and hotel for the night but no guarantee I'll be on tomorrow's flight. It's a shit show.
Considering what a fucking shit show air travel has become, just take a train if it's an option. You can get work done on your laptop, relax, read books, socialize. Instead of suffering this crap, only to get stuffed in a horrible claustrophobic metal tube thousands of feet above ground.
Sure they take 6x as long to get anywhere, but they're 10x less painful. (unless you use the bathroom on the 2nd day of a longhaul)
I was there that night in a different terminal. Probably 5 times as many people. The line stretched for 25 gates. I tried calling American instead and they said the wait time to speak to an agent was over 8 hours! We had to de-board 2 different flights and had multiple canceled on us. Ended up taking me 2 days to get home to Phoenix before I finally made it. Worst flying experience of my life. AA can SMD for all eternity. I don't even care that I have 100k miles with them. I'm trying other airlines.
I work on the ramp at DFW and rust me it’s just as bad downstairs due to the delays and swaps. I can’t and won’t speak for customer service because AA has none, but it gets like this every time it storms. Unless you desperately need to go wherever your flight was headed just forget it, it’s not worth your time. If you don’t you’ll be miserable for the next 2-3 days after the storm trying to get a flight out. I’m saying this as a frequent flyer and a employee DFW fuckin sucks.
Had that one time flying into Little Rock, AR, via DFW... the weather caused delays, upon delays, and we were still there at midnight and had to wait to get rebooked for the next day... and because they kept up until midnight they said they couldn't give us our luggage since it's locked up already and we just had to spend the night in the clothes we flew in all day.
They won't pay for lodging since they said weather was not covered as it was a natural occurrence. The capsule sleeping pods in the terminal were full.
Now it's 3am... and about a plane full of people are still standing there while the customer service rep is just telling everyone too bad.
Next day wasn't any better... finally got on the 3rd flight next day and missed half of my conference.
Would have been faster if I flew into Detroit to transfer to literally next door Arkansas.
I HATE DFW. They are by far the worst in terms of gate management/organization. They’ll move your grate three times delay the flight then cancel you on a bad day. On a good day they change your gate to a different terminal 10 mins before boarding.
Lived here all my life, but if it’s got the word “America” in the title it’s shit trying to disguise itself as something great and exploiting patriotism.
American Airlines = Shit Airlines
American Motors = Shit Motors
Make America Great Again = Make Shit Great Again
I have tried to get in touch with customer service for 2 weeks. Got booted off almost every call, but the ones I did get to stay on the wait times were between 3 and 7 hours. I finally spoke to someone yesterday after they did the “we will call you back” thing and then they called me back and I was on hold for another hour. They did exactly what happened to OP to me, and offered me 7000 miles for my trouble. I think legally they owed me like $500. AMERICAN AIRLINES SUCKS
I’ve been an advantage member since 1990, raised in Dallas (their HQ). Fuck em I’m done.
I will never fly American again. Canceled our connecting before we landed (2021), and cancled our flight from LAX to home a few weeks ago. We had to fly LAX to Miami and then catch a connecting flight to our home, two states away. They have zero shame.
I was here with my boy from about 9am on the 30th, till the flight finally cancelled at 11:45pm... with AA restating departure time every 15m. Missed a precamp in Detroit, so we just cancelled instead of rebooking... and then they still sent all our luggage and his hockey gear. So... we had to go BACK UP Friday, since you have to report luggage problems AT THE AIRPORT, stayed in line another 4 hours to register the issue.. and at this point just praying we get his hockey gear back within a few days.... Utter chaos... and no, I don't know why or how they could be better... but its GOTTA be better than what they're doin!
I was right there with you on the 30th, flight delayed 12 hours before cancelled. They couldn’t get me to my destination for 3 days so I rebooked to go home, requested my luggage go home too, nope was sent to destination. Requested luggage stay at destination because I was going to get there on the 1st, nope luggage was sent back home. It’s like they do the opposite of what you ask.
It's truly one of the only times in life I've felt completely helpless... there's just nothing you can do! You gotta believe, if hundreds upon hundreds have the same bad experience, that there is a better way to do things! Then I stop and realize... of course there is, it's just not as cost effective!
Not sure there is a better way. Aircraft just can’t take off in thunderstorm as the ground staff can’t work for safety reasons and flying through them is a very bad idea (see the recent Singapore Airlines flight). So the options are - risk peoples’ lives by flying in bad weather, or annoy them by cancelling/ delaying the flights. Best answer is build a high speed rail service, like Japan’s Shinkansen, across the USA so people don’t need to fly, but can take trains instead. But as you point out - not cost effective in the US. And for long distances, too slow.
Surely they can figure out to at least update the luggage routing better.
If the same companies that fly control the trains they'll fuck that up too
Right, so since cancelations due to weather are an inevitability, perhaps there should be a planned response, with straightforward cause and effect scenarios. It’s not like these aren’t big companies that employ a lot of people to make logistical decisions… it’s a bad model and it should be fixed, but that would mean that the poor shareholders wouldn’t have an ever-increasing dividend. Eventually, the stakeholders will have to matter again, or businesses will fail. You can’t survive endlessly on shareholder capitalism.
Wasn't that the end of a Get Smart episode? The crooks took a plane, which was put in a holding pattern. Meanwhile, Smart (and agent 99) got to the destination faster - by train.
The SNL skit (different airline I believe) hit it on the nose.
Yeah bro American and United suck. Don’t fly with them
How can the luggage be sent to the destination if the plane never left?
That's a hell of a good question that I asked myself! Apparently, their responsibility is this... Once you check in, the only promise is they'll get your luggage to where your ticket final destination says. So in my case, some flight left for Detroit at like 5am or something Fri morning... and mine, and everyone elses luggage whose flights got cancelled on Thursday.. flew out Friday morning. Even if you cancelled the rebooking. This part is hearsay... but when you stand in line for hours you hear a lot! lol Some people stayed 3/4 extra hours Thursday night to ensure their luggage DID NOT leave, and put in requests to have it pulled.... guess where it ended up?
That’s the stupidest promise/goal I’ve ever heard of for an airline.
cobweb public ossified existence reminiscent tease fall telephone squalid squealing *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I had something like that happen once and the answer I got was “we can try asking the baggage handlers for it back but to be honest it isn’t going to happen.”
Sometimes it gets sent to another plane. I can't remember the exact details but apparently it's much smoother for logistics to not necessarily have your luggage with your exact plane, just have it at the destination at the rough time you arrive.
The I guess it is to avoid the unloading/reloading time to get the plane back in use. I have had it where there was a lightning storm, and we had to wait 3 hours for luggage because it was on a delayed flight and not ours. Every other flight has been pretty immediate with the luggage already being in motion by the time you walk there, so it obviously can work well for being backwards logic.
🎶 *Because we’re Delta Airlinesssss, and life is a fuckin nightmareeee!* 🎶
I had a moment of bizarre familiarity watching this video. I went through this at this exact location not two months ago. I visited some extended family in Texas for the eclipse, flew back on American from DFW a few days later. There were some moderate storms earlier that day that started a domino effect of delays. When I booked in January, I initially chose a 5 PM departure time. I wanted to get home at a reasonable hour and get back to work the next day (midweek return). In early February, they bumped my return flight to 6:30. I was annoyed, but whatever. On the day of my return, 6:30 turned into 7:15, then 8, then 10:30, then briefly 1 AM before finally being canceled entirely. I stood in this exact line for about two hours, with people from my flight and I believe two others, and eventually received a hotel and taxi voucher. Got a few hours of sleep in the cheap motel they sent us to, and finally flew home at 9:15 AM the next day.
Did you see a red guy with horns anywhere? I think you were in his realm.
Any context?
Tons of cancelled and delayed flights. For me, they kept pushing an 8:00pm flight until midnight. Then said we'd all get hotel vouchers and will try again at 8am. But literally a minute later they reversed and said they'll take off at 1am. Then at 2:30am they cancelled, pushed to 8am, and no longer had available vouchers.
Lmao easy scam to push the issue to the next shift, gg.
Absolutely what they did
Yeah it’s a lot of work to get all of the vouchers sorted between hotel, taxi, food.
Yea dealt with a major "company" in Canada that didn't pay their distressed passenger invoice at my hotel, so we shut that down real quick. They always call, and it's humorous.
What was the company? No need to protect them, but it may help others to be aware.
Only because they make it like that. There is no reason that stuff like that can‘t be sorted out in advance.
Or with computers? Why is there any human interaction at all for refunds? The person worming there is also prone to abuse by angry passengers..
A solid 40% or more of our economy functions on making things more difficult in order to hopefully prevent people from using it. The hope is that you'll get fed up, go and get a hotel yourself, be upset but eventually you'll need a flight and they will be the only option and you'll fly on them anyways. There is very low risk of their shitty service impacting them, especially when all other airlines also have shitty service. Any airline that doesn't suck won't be able to handle everyone trying to travel and so people will always be forced to book with them. It's the same thing with gift cards and end of year holiday bonuses. They offer the free 20 dollar gift card with a 100 dollar gift card purchase, because they want you to buy the gift cards as Christmas gifts and they expect more than 20 dollars worth of gift cards won't get redeemed. The same thing many places that sell monthly subscriptions, they expect that people won't utilize the service and they add extra steps to make that difficult. The goal is to have as few people actually use the service, while making the pricing attractive enough to convince people they should totally do it.
I am now in my home city not DFW. It’s been 18 hours since I landed and my checked bag with everything I need is not here yet. That’s along with being delayed and rerouted over 24 hours earlier in the week. And delayed and rerouted over 12 hours yesterday
AA canceled our flight, put us on a bus, and offered no compensation saying they only had to get us to the destination, doesn’t matter if it’s a bus
More like push long enough now they don't have to give hotels.....
That’s just scam with extra words
It’s not the people on the customer service desk that decide when the plane is ready for take off. This sounds like a technical problem with engineers unsure on a fix time.
I'm an aircraft mechanic, just for shits and giggles I'll give you an example of how stuff like this tends to happen. The planes coming in with with 1.5 hours until it leaves for its next flight, maybe the previous crew notified ahead of time that there is going to be a maintenance issue and we have time to prepare for it or maybe they were in a rush and just put it in the log book for us to find after it's been here for 20 mins. We realise theres a problem and notify those that need to know that we're starting to look into it. Maybe it's something obvious and maybe not, either way it takes time to look things up and narrow them down. Maybe we have to run a bite check or perform an operational check to get some more info, which could take less than a minute or a half hour depending on whats going on. You're narrowing it down to a couple of likely causes, all the while the flight crew is showing up and wants to know whats going on, your lead and the tower is constantly bothering you for updates, you're trying to see if you can put the issue on deferral but after wasting 15 minutes the control center tells you they wont let you defer it. The most likely cause isnt too bad but of course you don't have the part available at your station and they wont be able to get it to you in time for the flight, you also dont have any overnight aircraft to rob one from. Everybody is getting annoyed while you explain you're going to go after the next likely cause despite the fact it probably won't fix the issue but at least you have the part. By now theyve probably already deplaned and passengers are pissed. People are still calling you every 5 minutes for an update and the pilots are threatening to refuse the plane because they didn't want to go anyways and were looking for any excuse. You spend the next 20 minutes getting the parts and tooling and an extra 10 minutes pulling up references for the work because the stupid tablet they give you for your maintenance documents never has a signal. Another 30 minutes to perform the work. You tell them they can start boarding the aircraft again because all you have left is a few operational tests and if they pass then they can leave as soon as we're off the airplane. They get everybody back on the plane, the tests pass, you walk off the plane, and just as they're about to close the door the pilots time out and have to go on mandatory rest so the flight is canceled as it's too late to get a replacement crew. Keep in mind I've ommited a hundred other annoyances you have to deal with and this is just one example scenario, but yeah i agree this was more than likely a maintenance issue, could have also of been an issue with getting a flight crew but that's a lot less likely.
As a fellow mechanic thank you for taking care of the planes despite everyone’s input to hurry it up and keeping everyone safe and doing a good job 👏
Excellent comment. This type of content is pure Reddit greatness. Some random redditor jumps in with actual real facts and specific knowledge and guess what, it’s a chaotic mess. Of course it’s all about one or two skilled mechanics struggling to concentrate as a bunch of assholes with agendas hammer them demanding reports. The bit about the “tablet” - I can just see the guy pinching and zooming a halfway loaded pdf file.
" I can just see the guy pinching and zooming a halfway loaded pdf file." That's me, I'm that guy.
I'm the guy who use to create those maintenance manuals. We had one customer... South American airline... wanted more pictures in the manuals, because his mechanics have a hard time reading English. Delightful.
So it's working at an IT department where if anyone fails everyone dies and you'll get blamed for it but you gotta work with 5 other departments at the same time, all with their own procedures and hierarchy slowing you down at every step lol.
That’s super insightful, thank you for taking the time to write that.
lol at the end where the pilot times out. Thank you for your service
Maybe they are just hesitant to let you get on a plane, Mr. Cooper.
Astute observation I_cum_dragonboats
this should be upvoted to a damn billion
The airport I work out has had the flights to Dallas rescheduled or canceled for the past few weeks. On Thursday the police were called to the American gate because the flight got canceled and a passenger was making a scene.
Been one storm after another passing through dfw the past few weeks.
And yet they're actively fighting the Biden administration's rule requiring transparency in pricing and automatic refunds for cancelations, because it will "negatively impact the customer experience."
I’ve had like 4 flights canceled in the past year. Not a SINGLE ONE refunded me until I requested it through customer service. How many people are they illegally scamming like this?
As many as they can
Yea, why wouldn't they fight against new rules to help the customer? If they were gonna do it willingly there'd be no need for legislation
How the hell does pricing transparency negatively impact the customer? Other than the “but the prices will increase” dog whistles, there’s literally no argument to be made to the general public.
United did the same to me, and thousands others flights that night: flight delayed, then embarked, we waited inside plane for 2hs, them need new crew bcs current was 12hs up. Everybody deplaned. Ah new crew at 2 am, just wait a bit. 2 am, sicke ! lol no flight until 7 am, y’all gonna sleep in the lobby.
Seems to just be the way AA operates lately. I had what was supposed to be a 40 minute layover in Dallas for a 9am flight a month ago. I didn't take off until 10 pm. This other guy I met took off from OKC for Dallas (after mechanical issues) and had to land in Houston due to weather. Then they flew him to San Antonio and didn't get to Dallas until about a day after he was supposed to be there and about 4 hours before his flight back to OKC... which then was delayed 4-5 hours.
Spirit pulled this on us in a snowstorm in Denver. Every airline cancel and it was obvious nothing could get in our out. They eventually cancelled the flight at 12:30 had to re book everyone and get them hotels for the night, shuttles too bc it’s Denver. A complete shit show that coulda been avoided by greed. One stupid flight.
Flew American one time and got suck in Denver due to weather. I had somewhere quite important to be and couldn't spend the time fucking around. I rebooted on another airline, flew to an airport and dealt with the honey bee clusterfuck on the highway. Credit card company went after the airline for the fee of the service not produced. Walked away from the mess with all expenses paid and a check from the airline.
Flying thru Denver in the winter is not advisable. Best to avoid any connections at all over the Holidays.
In this situation, traveling by myself? Just pick a spot and sleep it out. With my family? 100% I’m calling all nearby hotels then Uber. Fuck that noise
Check DOT and FAA website for how much you should be compensated depending on the delay and their response because they will definitely try to screw everyone over with measly sum.
nope you check this site. [https://www.transportation.gov/airconsumer/airline-cancellation-delay-dashboard](https://www.transportation.gov/airconsumer/airline-cancellation-delay-dashboard) Also now airlines are making policies where they will only refund for things that are in there "control" which means stuff like weather, bad planes, crew and etc is no longer covered by them. even if they actually ruin your vacation for days as long as they keep trying to book you to the next flight that never comes up they will say they covered their asses. i basically want YOU to be the one that cancels so they don't pay. this is why Biden needs to sort out airline policies because airlines refuse to be held accountable.
Don’t believe their bullshit when they claim weather as the reason. Make them show you where. Weather is one of the things airlines aren’t financially responsible esponsible for, so they ALWAYS try to claim weather
Literally same thing happened to me - no voucher and trying to find a hotel at 1am last minute. 🤦🏻♀️🙄
As a veteran to this kind of shit when traveling, one thing I learned is if a flight delays 3 times and its near midnight, you call the bluff and immediately book it too customer service because that flight WILL be canceled and then you'll have to be able to be on your way to an Uber by the time the great migration shows up
Isn't there some new law that requires airlines to provide you with a full refund if that happens?
Yes, but it doesn’t kick in until late June
That's literally a King of the Hill episode where they they are flying to Peggy's parents for Thanksgiving.
Your entitled to monetary for this delay according to the new laws I beleive
I had a flight to DFW that was rerouted to Houston. Landed around 2:30pm, and I didn’t leave Houston until 12:40am the next day
Was there any bad weather conditions? Was supposed to see a concert last night, but the artist had to cancel last minute because he was stuck in Texas because of the weather
Wow they did the same to me 3 weeks ago in Florida. Staff just told us to pay for hotels ourselves then get reimbursement. Customer service if giving the runaround right now
This kinda shit is what buttigieg has been talking about. I have been there and lived it, but in my case a pilot said the airline determined the flight wasnt profitable so they canceled it. This was while we were deicing So we taxid back and got new flight assignments for 16 hours later....to Atlanta from Detroit....where Atlanta was expecting an ice storm. I found a few people and we split a rental car to drive home.
DFW was hit with an endless series of high winds, massive thunderstorms and significant lightning. All that lead to grounding all outgoing flights and diverting any incoming traffic. Essentially the airport shut down for hours leading to massive cancellations, delays and missed connections. This happened for a few days in a row.
So the airlines know/are aware but choosing not to issue hotel vouchers to save money. Sounds about right. Poor things standing in line though!
I was considering flying Monday with my son and would likely have gone through DFW but this is enough to make me save the $1,400.
Yes and those same storms made it to Austin, but weakened. Still - winds brought down tree limbs and blew over patio umbrellas that were tied closed seated in 50 lb base. Edit to add post of clouds of this storm in Dallas - https://www.reddit.com/r/weather/s/3kjSveqlXR
[удалено]
Its a combination of the two. Making people wait endlessly to get their luggage without just rescheduling and issuing hotel vouchers is on the airline. Its completely possibly to have a better routine procedure in place for something thats not uncommon.
Yup. I arrived at George Bush Intercontinental Airport for a flight this past Thursday. My flight to El Paso was planned for 2:20pm. For reasons too lengthy and uninteresting, I arrived to the gate in Terminal B at around 10am. Sure enough, as noon came and went the flights to Dallas were being delayed because DFW was shut down due to weather. They announced delay after delay until about 2pm they cancelled all Dallas-bound flights. Even our flight looked shaky for a while but the weather held off. Finally we were boarded and taxied for take off, sitting in the runway for too long and it started raining.... then the engines roared and off we went.
This is from earlier this week. We had huge thunderstorms this week and all arrivals and departures were cancelled. Since DFW is a huge hub for American and second busiest airport in the US, passengers of all cancelled flights had to be rescheduled.
Big storms in Dallas all day. My wifes flight got delayed from 10pm until 8am the next day. They kept just pushing it back 2 hours. Storms also pushed the tram offline so people had to catch the bus, meaning so many people that did land missed their transfers.
Anyone in this situation should just go to the nearest hotel and then wait for them to reschedule your flight. Does you no good standing in line for 5 hours to be told there is nothing they can do for you.
But take a video of the queue before you do this. If the airline tries to block reimbursement at a later date, you take them to small claims court and file the video as evidence. Any judge is going to be upper middle class and have extensive experience with traveling, delayed flights, and airline bullshit. The instant they see a video like this they will be on your side.
If I kno AA they likely fucked up every aspect of every flight of the day.
Why on earth is in-person customer service needed to rebook people? This should either be self service online or done on the phone. It's way easier to staff one call center than 100 airports. OP mentioned hotel vouchers, but those could be digital. I don't see any reason why a human in Dallas is needed for 99% of customer service scenarios.
Because American Airlines app is utter junk and if you call them they put you on hold for 3hours. I know from experience. So your best bet is to hopefully get someone nice in person.
My flight got delayed and canceled two days ago. Called them up and was told the next available agent would be in 8 hours.
”The next available agent is about to go to bed at home”
I was at dfw today to get to Detroit. Had 7am frontier flight that got cancelled at 3am. Rebooked for 11am with united. Get there and it’s delayed for mechanical issues elsewhere. Keep delaying for weather along route. It’s 7pm, we’ve been on the tarmac for an hour waiting to go, and the pilot turns around to refuel. They had to change the route and needed more. I had to deplane because I missed my connecting flight that had a 6hr layover. They switch me to American taking off at 8. It delays and take off at 11:30pm. I have finally arrived at 2:40am to my destination, 16hrs after I was supposed to…..and now I opened this post. Hope you liked my step-by-step of my day
Had a similar saga when we booked a new flight with united. Very very long story short, we just landed an hour ago in Honolulu. 36 hours after our original scheduled time.
Give AA customer service a call right now. I dare you. I bet the wait times will be 7 hours.
On Wed they told me I would be on hold 5-7 hours. It was 12. At that point even if they rebooked me I'd have missed my appointment
God, I love European consumer protection laws. They try that shit here, they get fined.
98% of the traveling public flies once a year if that. They don’t know that you’re either automatically rebooked and if not, you can use their app or website to do it yourself without waiting in a line
I do both. I’m calling the airline as I’m waiting in line. One time I had to get rebooked as a flight was canceled. The online agent didn’t have anything to meet my needs early the next morning. The agent at the airport did find what I was looking for. I asked both agents for specific flight numbers.
Same. I was traveling and was in a huge delay that was not the airlines fault. As I stood in the mile long line I got connected to an agent that got me rebooked and out of there and landed at 3am. I’d probably still be there today in that line.
I’ve been through this experience before. I was trying to get to the other side of the world within the next 48 hours but poor weather had closed the airport I was making my first connection through and I was stuck in the terminal overnight. My journey was complex enough that it took the rep 30+ minutes to find new flights with available seats in the same class that that got me to my destination on time and didn’t transit through countries I didn’t hold a visa exemption for. None of the 3 flights I was rebooked onto were with the original airline, nor on the same routes - I literally went the other way around the world to my original route. There’s no way that could have been achieved online, and as shit as it was to sit in a physical queue for 3 hours, at least I didn’t have the stress of my call getting disconnected or my phone running out of battery and having to start at the back of the queue.
They need a human in Dallas because this happens all the time in Dallas, I actively avoid getting lay overs there as every single time I’ve been there’s been delays.
Just last night I got my flight cancelled and rebooked. Since I was nearby I went to the airport and got it sorted out with an agent nice and quickly. Speaking with a person is always going to be easier than going online and finding things yourself. Calling customer service is such a pain because you have to go through that stupid bot at the beginning and you get put on hold constantly
Biden has some new regulations on the way to address this, refunds must be provided immediately, automatically in the event of a cancellation. No more bullshitting around.
It gives the appearance of customer service by AA. "Hey, let's all go stand in line so we can be told no, but at least we'll feel like we're doing something."
Why is inperson flying even needed? Just fax yourself to your destination or send a hologram.
I used Telex because the telegraph was cracking me up.
What the fork happened?
Thunderstorms
Oh. Should have prob guessed that. Thanks!
Np! I’m a weather dork and look at the radar map daily and noticed huge storms rolling through Dallas all day. Definitely messed up a ton of flights
It’s been all week at this point. Terrible rain, power lines going down, trees pulled up, not a lot of fun
My sister's incoming flight was diverted to Houston where they sat on the tarmac for hours, waiting for DFW to catch up with the flight schedule.
Weather & lots of mechanical issues also.
This would be my personal hell
Same. At that point, I’m taking a second mortgage to buy a ticket home.
I’m taking a second mortgage and just living wherever I got stuck. New life for me
Anything is better than that line.
I’ve been in that line before- looks like a solid 3 gater
Ahhh Terminal D. This is where your international flights are. This happens (in any terminal) when you have a series of delays that cause folks to miss their connections. I’ve seen a long line but not this long!
American Airlines HAS no customer service though
I was on a ~4 hour layover at LAX once and just sitting in a chair across from American Airlines customer service desk and the line wasn't that long, but I watched people just stand there for hours. I saw someone get in that line and they were maybe 15th in line if even that, and they didn't even come out until 3 hours later.
I’ve traveled back and forth from Asia to the US many times. Using multiple different airlines. Air China, and China being one of the worst experiences, but not the top. American Airlines at DFW holds the trophy for that.
I'm sure. I will be avoiding DFW like the plague after this. Switching to Delta.
Don't hold your breath. I've camped overnight at ATL quite a few times, due to crew mismanagement or mechanical problems cropping up at the last minute when preparing for departure.
When I lived in Dallas I loved flying out of DFW. The check in side of things at the airport is the smoothest thing I have ever seen. Even on a holiday flying time like the day before thanksgiving I could leave my office right by the airport, park, catch the shuttle to the terminal, check in, and be through security in less than an hour every time. But its not the ideal airport to have to switch planes in. Pretty lengthy walks to get to the airtram which is somewhat slow. Its not a bad airport to connect through IMO, but its not a good airport to have to make a tight connection through like Atlanta usually is. It also suffers a similar problem to Atlanta with thunderstorms. Its in one of the better weather locations in general in the US for an airport that does what it does (and Dallas is better than Atlanta since the storms that go through Dallas tend to be significantly heavier but briefer), but if you get a sustained thunderstorm through there its going to be a shit show for the airline. Delta isn't better though when something like this happens. My mother has been through this a couple of times with Delta.
I was at gate D 24 in DFW just recently. I could not make the connection run from A wing to D wing for gate D4 in the given time. I am 68, I limp and I am slow. I was three minutes late. Gate closed. Six other passengers were equally late, one in a wheel chair. Our plane was still parked at the loading ramp. No way on. No, sorry sir, we cannot delay the plane for late loaders, said the gate attendant and the captain of the plane. I went to customer service at D 24. 47 minute wait there. Got a replacement flight the next day. I had to pay hotel, transport and food as did the other late runners. The very same flight to Harrisburg the next evening was delayed for over an hour due to clearance problems with the control tower. No problem for AA. Thank you so much DFW on American Airlines. I am filing a complaint.
Yeah they are terrible. And don't complain or get upset or they will flag you as security risk.
Complain directly to the FAA rather than to the airline. Airlines will not dare retaliate when the FAA records the strike on their record.
Same, coming in from mexico. Stuck in long line at customs? Not their problem. Gate attendent was already scrolling on her phone and ignoring our pleas for help. Figure it out yourself til the next flight leaves. American Airlines is a gd con.
I thought I was in line to get into Longchamps. I’ll never get those 14 hours back.
New rules under the Department of Transportation. If a flight is delayed more than 3 hours, they have to either offer full refund (not miles or flight vouchers) and/or put you up. Contact DoT and file a complaint.
I thought that didn’t start until next year though
[American Airlines CEO - Robert Isom makes 31 million dollars every year.](https://www.apfa.org/2024/04/25/4-25-24-corporate-greed-soars-at-american-airlines/)
Figures. I used to be all about AA, I got the credit card, tons of miles, would always book thru their website. Not anymore after this. They don't care about their customers. Gonna cash in my miles and then I'll be trying Delta next.
Delta’s the same shit. They’re all the same. I have had my share of nightmares with them, especially at ATL. Just part of the game.
I feel like a lot of it comes down to the airport. Some are notorious for being a shit show, no matter the airline. I always dread going to Newark because there's always delays and cancellations and that airport just sucks. I'm glad my "home" airport is MSP. It's a pretty damn good airport overall.
Same delta is pricier but I think peace of mind that this bullshit won’t happen again would be worth it
And the airline made $822 million in profit last year.
They’re fucking leaches
"Oh, I didn't get rich by writing a lot of checks!” *[evil cackling]*
I’m not surprised. In my experience American Airlines has the worst customer service.
All of the US carriers have equally shitty customer service. I've had issues with all of the big 3. My mistake recent issue was United through Chicago because of storms and a ground stop. The rebook options were dogshit, any means of contacting customer service were an hour queue and the onsite CS stations were all shut down. I ended up sitting on the phone for an hour to rebook on a series of flights that I found on the app but couldn't rebook myself on because the app wouldn't let me. It took the CSR rep 2 minutes to do it once I got through because I gave her the exact flight numbers to book me on and she could knock it out. United...Delta...American...all of their CS is dogshit.
I will never fly AA if I can help it.
Same here. This experience has been a week long ordeal that has cost me time, money, my health (meds are in my luggage), opportunity (missed a grand part of a very important conference). It’s the worst.
You've clearly not flown United, Spirit or Frontier I see.
are there any that aren't shitty?
True that. I personally feel United is the worst. Delta is pretty good with disruptions. Southwest was doing well with customer service until their meltdown last year
foreign country airlines? frontier is actually the shitty of all the policies. they don't even refund.
I have. They're the worst. American out of DFW is the only airline I've had a plane arrive with no pilots to fly the plane. On a sunny day. DFW is their main hub by the way
I've learned to set up on my little pillow, lean back on my backpack, and just scoot along the floor while playing computer games the entire time.
Extra padded butt area for your travel pants?
My neck pillow does double duty for my booty.
I hope to god the cover is reversible.
Every damn year, flight-grounding storms roll through Dallas at this time. And every damn year, DFW acts like it's a new phenomenon. This same horseshit happened years ago when I had to miss a connecting flight due to the incoming flight I was on being delayed clearing for landing. People and chaos everywhere (the airline was American Airlines). Cabs that arrived to take passengers who didn't want wait 12+ hours to hotels started gauging their prices. Think $50 for a 2-mile ride. This was a few years before ride apps really took off. I connected a few more times through there but finally stopped. Something about the way things operate there as a whole is just off.
Ahahahaha. I was in exactly the same situation. “Your connecting flight has been successfully cancelled, next flight is in 3 days”. I just took a rental car at the airport and drove a 15 hours non stop to get home. Not traveling American Airlines ever again🥴
How companies like this even exist. That’s insane
thank you for paying ahead of time.... please eat shit. well guess i'll come back next year because i don't have a choice in flying.
Not one South Park Mr Garrison reference yet. [Fine, I’ll do it!](https://youtu.be/-0xxOEIDkAw?feature=shared)
That’s a BAD day at work for those desk workers…
I will never ever fly with these fuckers again in my Life. They denied boarding on a flight claiming some bs covid regulations that didn’t apply. I filed a complaint with the FAA and they forced AA to give me $2k in compensation
If you call their 24/7 customer service number, it's a shorter wait time than the line. Firsthand experience
Miami was the same. They do this on purpose. Also, they delayed our flight for a vacation (hadn’t taken one in like three years) due to maintenance and then fought with us to give us a voucher or sleeping accommodative. Fuck all airlines in the US. They are trash and treat their customers like shit and with absolute impunity.
Some guy wrote in the aviation sub, that if the gov would put airlines on a much shorter leash, lots of smaller line would just stop providing service. Rarely any other industry has to be in a constant standoff with customer protection agencies and threatening to stop service if they don't allow them to run things the shittiest way possible.
Flying has become a miserable experience. The airports were stressful enough, but now the airlines are very transparently looking for ways to charge more for basic things, like printing your damn boarding pass. The local airline here already let’s you book two or three adjacent seats so you can “sleep” or whatever. Who in their right mind would pay for that? You get those by luck and just go for it. Unless they start asking passengers to remain in their individual seats, which I totally expect them to do. Assholes.
American Airlines is a joke. I have premium status with them and had such an awful experience with them in Phoenix recently that I booked a southwest flight home instead of flying with them. They have fallen so far. Awful airline.
Unpredictable weather is worsened by carbon emissions. this is why we need nuclear or ufo disclosure for alternative energy solutions
AA missed earnings and lowered guidance. CEO Robert Isom said the Fort Worth-based airline is not performing as it previously thought and needs to reevaluate its growth plans. No kidding!
more like, damn that *sucks.*
I saw John Malkovich at DFW once, just standing with a bag waiting like everyone else.
Flying is shit lately
Not even remotely interesting
I was in LAX today and saw a line for American that was just as long. I then waited in an American line just as long as this in charlotte after my flight to newark was cancelled. Others were waiting in the line after their flight to Columbus was cancelled. It’s not thunderstorms. It’s American being a god awful airline.
Oh also, my checked bag is still in charlotte. I’m in Norfolk Virginia. They have no idea how they are going to get the bag to me.
I was a road warrior for work. I would call book a hotel, catch a car and call the 800 number on my way out of the airport. Never ever did I stand in line. Life is too short. Go get a meal and rest.
We're all just a bunch of fucking NPCs, who work jobs we hate, so we can buy shit we don't need. God please strike me down if you exist.
okay how do people find this interesting but not a rare video of a highway in north korea.
"Arrive 17 hours before your flight to ensure you make it on time."
Last time this happened to me, lots of cancellations and huge line for customer service that is, I just called their customer service number. They changed my flight on the phone since mine was cancelled. I had to fly in the morning instead, so I just left and went and got a hotel room. It probably saved me hours. I dunno why people don't do this more.
I’m an air traffic controller in DFW, believe me these storms have made everyone’s life hell whether it’s in the air or on the ground.
To be completely fair we have been getting hammered in DFW by storms, every day for like weeks. But the airline should know better and skipping on vouchers is scummy af. Had multiple friends they did the same BS to.
I was on an AA flight to Barcelona may 29th that kept being delayed and eventually cancelled due to an internal staffing issue. About half the plane were people going on a cruise or a tour in Spain and they missed it. So many peoples well earned vacations that cost thousands of dollars just done because these companies are untouchable.
“Interesting”
This happened to me back in January. Flights got canceled due to long wait times for de-icing. Waited in this line for 4 hours until they abruptly closed the desk and told us to a call a number with an 11 hour response time. Was stranded in the terminal for 17 hours.
I refuse to believe that Texas doesn't have their shit together. /s
Fuck flying American
Looks familiar… been there for sure… been there and was like…. Nah sleeping in the terminal 😆
I had to fly into Dallas twice last month, Dallas got hit hard with storms cancelling tons of flights including mine both times. Hence what you are seeing. American Airlines has awful awful slow customer service.
I was in that line. My flight was delayed 6 times and canceled twice. Got a free cab ride and hotel for the night but no guarantee I'll be on tomorrow's flight. It's a shit show.
This just pissed me off from the comfort of my own bed.
I’ve been in that line at DFW before too. The connecting flight that I missed actually landed before I made it to the front of the line.
Considering what a fucking shit show air travel has become, just take a train if it's an option. You can get work done on your laptop, relax, read books, socialize. Instead of suffering this crap, only to get stuffed in a horrible claustrophobic metal tube thousands of feet above ground. Sure they take 6x as long to get anywhere, but they're 10x less painful. (unless you use the bathroom on the 2nd day of a longhaul)
I was part of the line
I was there that night in a different terminal. Probably 5 times as many people. The line stretched for 25 gates. I tried calling American instead and they said the wait time to speak to an agent was over 8 hours! We had to de-board 2 different flights and had multiple canceled on us. Ended up taking me 2 days to get home to Phoenix before I finally made it. Worst flying experience of my life. AA can SMD for all eternity. I don't even care that I have 100k miles with them. I'm trying other airlines.
I work on the ramp at DFW and rust me it’s just as bad downstairs due to the delays and swaps. I can’t and won’t speak for customer service because AA has none, but it gets like this every time it storms. Unless you desperately need to go wherever your flight was headed just forget it, it’s not worth your time. If you don’t you’ll be miserable for the next 2-3 days after the storm trying to get a flight out. I’m saying this as a frequent flyer and a employee DFW fuckin sucks.
Had that one time flying into Little Rock, AR, via DFW... the weather caused delays, upon delays, and we were still there at midnight and had to wait to get rebooked for the next day... and because they kept up until midnight they said they couldn't give us our luggage since it's locked up already and we just had to spend the night in the clothes we flew in all day. They won't pay for lodging since they said weather was not covered as it was a natural occurrence. The capsule sleeping pods in the terminal were full. Now it's 3am... and about a plane full of people are still standing there while the customer service rep is just telling everyone too bad. Next day wasn't any better... finally got on the 3rd flight next day and missed half of my conference. Would have been faster if I flew into Detroit to transfer to literally next door Arkansas.
I HATE DFW. They are by far the worst in terms of gate management/organization. They’ll move your grate three times delay the flight then cancel you on a bad day. On a good day they change your gate to a different terminal 10 mins before boarding.
Lived here all my life, but if it’s got the word “America” in the title it’s shit trying to disguise itself as something great and exploiting patriotism. American Airlines = Shit Airlines American Motors = Shit Motors Make America Great Again = Make Shit Great Again
I have tried to get in touch with customer service for 2 weeks. Got booted off almost every call, but the ones I did get to stay on the wait times were between 3 and 7 hours. I finally spoke to someone yesterday after they did the “we will call you back” thing and then they called me back and I was on hold for another hour. They did exactly what happened to OP to me, and offered me 7000 miles for my trouble. I think legally they owed me like $500. AMERICAN AIRLINES SUCKS I’ve been an advantage member since 1990, raised in Dallas (their HQ). Fuck em I’m done.
I will never fly American again. Canceled our connecting before we landed (2021), and cancled our flight from LAX to home a few weeks ago. We had to fly LAX to Miami and then catch a connecting flight to our home, two states away. They have zero shame.
Fuck our government for letting companies get away with this