American Now Offers Same Day Flight Changes and Standby Via Mobile App

by Gary Leff

American Airlines same day change and standby is finally available through the airline’s mobile app. That’s great to see.

An airline spokesperson tells me,

It is native within the app if you’re traveling alone and are an elite, flying in first class, or on a Y fare. Multiple passengers traveling in a PNR and non-elites are directed to aa.com (still within the app) and they don’t need to login again.

Now that the things which are seemingly most important to the airline — things which extract more revenue from customers like Basic Economy, and which save the airline money like devaluing their miles or limiting the number of flights you can have in an award — have been accomplished, they can turn to things which make the travel experience better.

So it’s nice to see the airline making progress on their technology. Over the summer they improved baggage tracking and notification in the app. Buying tickets still isn’t truly native in the app, though it is improved. I think it’s important to make it a priority to print the correct boarding times on tickets, and display them in the app and on airport screens. Currently large narrowbodies (A321s and 757s) board 35 minutes prior to departure but American hasn’t updated the IT for this and still tells customers they board 30 minutes out.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  3. As does United. Apple gets a cut of in-app purchases, meaning money for stuff that is to be used within the app, not for merely using the app to make a purchase. This is why the Amazon app on iOS lets you buy most of the things available on the Amazon website (so no, Apple doesn’t get 30% when you buy a $1000 TV), but you can’t buy digital books, music, or videos, because that would be considered an in-app purchase and Apple would get a cut.

  4. I guess it’s nice that they’ve added this to the app, but from this EXP’s perspective AA’s same day confirmed change policy is pretty worthless: have to keep to the same routing (i.e. can’t change a connection point even with same O/D); and it’s not any seat available, AA has to open a specific fare class. It’s just too restricted of a program.

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