I was trapped 2 days at DFW trying to get my connection home to Phoenix. I made it home late last night, via standby, and have never been so happy. I stood in customer service lines for over 10 hours during my 2 day delay. It was taking each customer 15 mins plus when you finally reach an agent and the lines were hundreds deep. I finally picked the smallest terminal and found the shortest line but it still took me 2.5 hours of standing to speak with a person. The customer service phone number was a joke as it stated you will be called back when it's your place in line in approximately 6.5 to 8 hours.
Meanwhile I running gate to gate to attempt standby. I learned a lot about the airline agency through this experience. However, I will say when you finally get to speak with an agent they did their very best to help you. I was lucky I was traveling alone and could afford the $300 hotel room I had to book late Monday night.
My heart went out to people traveling with young children and older individuals who relied on wheelchairs. The worst experience I encountered was an unaccompanied child (+|- 8 yrs old?) who was being shuffled between airline staff as they tried to get him home. I do think American Airlines was doing it's best but it shows how fragile the whole system is. As a passenger escorting two young teens in this mess it has been very unpleasant. I usually fly Alaska and regret choosing American in this instance, their customer service is not up to parr. I was not going to leave a minor at DFW even though I had a confirmed seat on a flight, the gate agents couldn't do anything to prioritize getting the kids out first.
Customer service had lines hours long in every terminal at DFW and phone waits were also several hours. In the end I rebooked on Alaska instead of waiting over 36 more hours to see if the rebooked American flight would go. Costed me airfare for 2 on another carrier, plus 2 nights hotel and 1 day of PTO off work.
My husband had a flight on American Sunday evening - it was delayed for over an hour with no reason given. Little Sweet was the last bag off the plane at his connection and he missed his next flight, arriving at the gate 10 minutes before departure. Door was closed, no gate agents around, and the plane departed early.
And clearly no one was checking to see if there were close connections. He waited in customer service line for 30 minutes and was rebooked to another city, then left on his own to find a hotel and a way to drive the 90 minutes between where he landed and where he needed to be. Evidently American has the 'right' to do everything they did on this trip.
And we have the 'right' to not fly American next time. Unfortunately I'm not sure if any other airlines that serve our mid size city are any better. The union pointed to Father's Day weekend in June when hundreds of flights were canceled and more than 60,000 passengers were affected by more operational problems that came after weather issues. There was a mild late afternoon rainstorm which should not have caused even flight delays let alone flight cancellations.
My mid-afternoon flight home was cancelled, no reason given, I called AA number to re-schedule which allowed me to receive a call back in 2-hours better than staying on hold. They only offered flights the following day which I found out from the American Express Centurion Lounge was not true. There was a later flight the same day to my destination that showed open. I was able to secure a seat by asking for that specific flight which was not being offered to save me another night in Dallas which came with only a 6-hour delay.
The real kicker came at baggage claim where I and approximately 200 other passengers from two flights got to wait 2-hours to find out most of our bags were not on the plane. Am I now to believe COVID-19 has caused AA to be short of baggage personnel? And even when skies had cleared Monday and Tuesday, delays and cancellations piled up because American didn't have enough planes, pilots and flight attendants in the right places to fly weary passengers.
Many of those passengers were asking why they had to pay for hotel rooms, meals and taxis when planes were delayed because of a lack of pilots and flight attendants. Customers on Spirit Airlines ran into similar problems with weather over the weekend, similarly wrecking flight schedules for the next few days and forcing the carrier to cancel more than half of its flights on Tuesday. We left out of PNS to only sit at the gate for a hour and a half waiting to leave PNS. The pilot kept saying that it was a mechanic problem.
Knowing that we only have a hour layover at DFW we booked another flight knowing that we would miss our connecting flight. When we finally arrived at DFW we waited on the tarmac for another 30min only to find out that our connecting flight to LAX was still there delayed. The problem with AA is that they furloughed 30,000 workers, retired out 23,000 employees, retired 100's of planes and grounded 100's more early in the pandemic. They stopped running more than 1/2 of their domestic and 75% of the international routes due to such a low passenger level which at 1 point was less than 10% of normal.
I never stopped flying and I saw the whole thing unfold so I get the fact that they had to do something. Problem is that by this time last year ridership was back to more than 30%, they were filling most flights and they wave was just beginning to swell. They saw the wave coming and unfortunately they decided to ride it with a reduced workforce so that they could line their pockets.
They filled every seat and did not serve meals/beverages in the name of safety and social distancing . The intense cleaning between flights seldom happened shortly after the filling of the planes . It will take 100's of hours to get each plane out of mothball shape if done correctly /safely. It will probably take until September before we get the freeloaders off of their couch and back to work but only if the government stop handing out our taxes dollars and spending like drunken sailors. Until the planes and people are back to work you better buckle up buttercup and get used to the new age of air travel.
If they do not fill the plane on the route you booked then they will cancel the flight, re-route you and re-route the plane to a flight they can fill. Cancellations and delays began Saturday morning before any bad weather, and only affected American Airlines. My connecting flight in Dallas from Nashville was first delayed twice then cancelled on Saturday night. Next flight wasn't available to Spokane until Monday morning 7am but cancelled late Sunday night, next available flight is on Tuesday night.
I ended up flying Alaska Airlines who haven't been affected by some type of gas shortage and or bad weather. Dallas did have a thunderstorm for a few hours Sunday afternoon. Made it from SAN to DFW then had 2 flights cancelled on me after waiting for 5 hours then another 3 hours. After the first cancellation I got a hotel and it cost me a $100 Lyft ride to go 10 miles - which was complete gouging.
Didn't know about the second cancellation until I woke up. Called EP desk at 4am and got a call back after 2 hours and managed to get out to east coast about 5 hours later. The thunder and lightning was pretty bad - not surprised they had massive impact.
Just wish AA would cancel flight earlier instead of trying to keep all the flights as "possibles" until they can't - then it seems to be a deluge of cancellations and people running for hotels and taxis. If they canceled a few earlier to ease the pressure later on then at least those affected might be able to plan what to do w/ less stress. The lines to the AA Customer Service desk in Terminal D were at least 100 yds long - walked past them multiple times. We just returned home after being stranded at DFW for 48+ hours. The most frustrating thing is that we couldn't retrieve our checked baggage.
Tried multiple times and was told that it " would take 6-12 hours". We actually tried anyway and turns out they had sent our baggage on to our destination. Greeted in a friendly fashion by an airline that actually knows how to provide customer service and is well managed.
Despite having a past of hundreds of thousands of miles on American- we will be shopping for a different airline in the future. I understand the weather causing a delay, but other airlines were taking off and landing just fine while AA was still not moving their planes. The weather would have had an impact, but not THAT much of an impact. A seemingly disabled man (in a wheelchair, had tremors etc.) was having difficulty communicating due to this disability. He was removed from the line with no answers and no next steps. All that being said, the employees at the counter had to deal with hours of angry passengers while the people in charge of these decisions continued to have the money roll in from their overbooked flights.
At 1 am, management called local law enforcement, but didn't inform them that their plan was to announce the service desk closing and just walk out. Shout out to the kind officers who played customer service rep, info desk, and sounding boards for the hundreds of stranded passengers with no answers. I have never experienced what I saw and lived through that day. Cancelled flight/rebooked that day on another flight. The plane we were booked on was at Dallas several hours prior to our departure.
Now it is Tuesday and our lost luggage still says "open". We are on hold and waiting with customer service now for over an hour. I understand there was a weather issue but getting baggage onto a plane isn't that difficult.
Secondly it shouldn't take this long for AA to get our luggage to our destination, after all we are in the US. The AA CEO needs to step up and take responsibility. We head home on Thursday and our concern is that our luggage will stay in limbo and never receive it. We have given up even thinking we will have a change of clothes, shoes etc on this trip. AA needs to step it up and figure out their issues and get them resolved. On the third consecutive day, June 16, passengers continued to deal with canceled flights and delays, as the airline tried to recover.
Some passengers waiting on their flights at airports experienced hours of waiting following canceled and delayed flights as a result of bad weather, staffing shortages and operational issues. It's no news, American Airlines have performed badly on the flight delays and cancellation chart. With more flights out of the UK delayed or cancelled than most other airlines, American Airlines has a notoriety of being always liable to the delay compensation claim. I was at DFW yesterday trying to catch our connecting flight. Unfortunately, AA kept delaying the flight until 1 am and then they cancelled it. They knew they were going to eventually cancel because they had no employees to run these flights.
The lines at the Customer Service counter were not normal and a demonstration of American Airlines poor performance in all aspects. I will never fly American Airlines again and encourage everyone to do the same. The customer service is so poor, I feel our country has sadly turned into a third-world country with its poor service and dependence on outsourcing. Our Monday 0700 flight from Miami to DFW was canceled at midnight Sunday and rebooked for Tuesday morning.
Unacceptable, so After waiting 6 hours for Customer service to call me back we got a flight booked for that afternoon, Miami to Orlando connecting to DFW around 2200 hours. We did make it to Orlando where we got grounded and had to wait over two hours to receive our luggage. So once again we played the call and wait for customer service to get back in touch so we could book another flight. Now we are booked for a Wednesday direct flight to DFW, SO hopefully we will make it home 60 hours later than originally scheduled. In May, it took American Airlines more than a week to recover from a bad weather weekend. The airline said that these kinds of extreme weather events with heavy thunderstorms can cause pilots and flight attendants to hit FAA limits for hours worked and subsequently harm schedules in upcoming days.
It's particularly bad when it happens somewhere like DFW, American's biggest hub. Flight information is provided by the airlines and updated every 15 minutes. We make every attempt to ensure information is accurate and timely. However, we are not responsible for the completeness and accuracy of the data.
It should also be noted that flight status beyond 24 hours may change. We provide this look into the future as a convenience to our customers. Passengers are encouraged to check with their airline carrier for expected flight status more than 24 hours out.
You can also sign up for American Airlines opens in a new window flight notification text alerts or United flight notification text alerts for the most up to date flight information. American just acquired other airlines and put them in management. We were sent to at least 15 different gates and were at the airport over 15 hours. Talked to a crew member that had their plane location changed 9 times on the way to the airport.
Total mismanagement or someone hacked their computer system. He also suggested people use apps versus calling customer service because no matter the airline, the wait will be long. Angry passengers voiced their complaints to the companies directly and on Twitter. Passengers who tried contacting the airline services experienced hold-times stretching hours from American Airlines customer service. Others included pictures of packed airports and long lines, screenshots of tickets, cancelled flights and responses they received from the companies.
Most of the proactive cancellations are for the first half of the month and amount to 1% of the flights that were planned, the airline said. Travelers were automatically rebooked on other flights, but that often means different departure times, an unplanned connection or inconvenient routing and other hassles. Those with upcoming travel plans should check the status of their flight, so there are no surprises in July.
