American Airlines has a new system for automatically rebooking passengers when their flights are delayed or cancelled. It’s more powerful than what they’ve used before, but there’s also the potential to cause problems for passengers who would have made their flights – passengers who may come in off of a delayed flight, run through the airport hoping to make their connection, and find that even though the door is still open for their next flight their seat has been given away.
The airline has made a number of processes automated, like clearing standbys and upgrades earlier, to make the boarding gate less chaotic – so they can staff it with just one agent rather than two on flights that are less than 80% full.
There’s a full-court push to automate, and that often that means doing this earlier. They’re rolling out a new automated re-accommodation tool tool to rebook passengers when their flights are cancelled or delayed.
- It’s called AURA for “AUtomated ReAccommodation”
- The system will fully roll out by June
- The goal is to process more rebookings automatically, which means fewer passengers calling and fewer itineraries being reconstructed manually. That saves agent resources.
Here’s what’s different:
AURA utilizes a concept called discovered inventory, in which it identifies passengers that are certain to misconnect and utilizes that available inventory for protecting other passengers who may
need that space.Because of this, occasionally the flight may temporarily appear to be slightly
overbooked. Please remember to check the BX list to identify misconnects if you encounter a flight
that appears over booked.The notice that Auto Reaccom has run for a flight will no longer appear in FLIFO. You can identify if a PNR was processed by AURA as it will show the term “PRNG Update” in the received from field as shown in the example below:
What this means is American is going to take people off of flights before they actually misconnect in order to give their seats to someone else. And we know that people do – occasionally, but all the time – have flights where it’s ‘obvious’ they cannot make their connection and then something happens at the last minute so that they do. Now they might find themselves without the connection, even though circumstances lined up so that they could have made it… if American hadn’t given their seat to someone else instead.
Most of the time this is going to work out well, and more people will get where they’re going more smoothly. Occasionally some people will have something taken from them that shouldn’t have been, in order to accomplish that. American clearly suggests this will not happen but it seems clear that it almost certainly will.
Indeed, in the aforementioned memo to all customer care agents last month reviewed by View From The Wing, the airline asked employees to “report any automated rebooking that appears to be irregular” so the possibility of problems is certainly being contemplated.
Hypothetically, it’s a great concept. In reality, it doesn’t account for irregular operations, which are consistent in this industry. Imagine, being delayed on your first outbound, the system recognizes a missed connection, rebooks automatically and then your connection goes on delay due to weather, ATC, maintenance or crew availability so instead of a missed connection, one is able to make their flight. Once at the gate, the passenger finds out their reservation on the original flight is no longer honored and the seats reassigned to new passengers. Yea, I’d be justifiably irate and pissed off, too! The AI system is a tragic folly and the future with be filled with many DOT complaints and possibly class action lawsuits.
@Black Cloud Aura – AI works better for everyone as a group. Sure some people will be displaced or inconvenienced but the overall impact will be more efficient operations and revenue recognition. You can complain all you want to the DOT – it doesn’t matter. As for “class action lawsuits” – get real. Why do people think a lawsuit is the magic bullet for any perceived grievance? In this case the Contract of Carriage (which passengers agree to when they book a ticket whether they know that or not) allows airlines broad discretion and if they use software that doesn’t have any biases toward protected classes then there shouldn’t be grounds for any such suit. You do realize that if a connection is delayed for whatever reason the airline can release seats 15 minutes before the ORIGINAL departure time and is under no obligation to accommodate late arriving passengers.
I don’t think the problem here is the AI system per se, but rather the attempt to deal with it too soon, before it’s become certain that the passenger won’t make it. The reality is that when one flight is delayed often other flights are delayed, a passenger who won’t make it to the gate before 15 minutes from scheduled departure very often will actually make the flight. It’s “efficient” only if you use a flawed metric and assign no cost to bumping a passenger who will miss the 15 minute before scheduled window but will make the actual flight.
Expensive indeed. The Cost is in passengers that will now fly AA only when there is no other choice.
@AC anyone can get sued, you ignorant doosh. And AA will see it if these idiotic AI programs ruin someone’s business, cause delays to see loved ones. When the delays are the FAULT of the airlines they can take their AI program and shove it up their pieholes. As the ticket agents nearly found out a few months ago, security had to save their asses after a half dozen angry New Yorkers were threatening to beat the crap out of them. Police had to be called. The ignorance of this AI (another selfish money grab by AA) will either be changed or eliminated when a rich New Yorker has a greedy Joo attorney and will sue the living out of AA. And then the Class Action will come around and AA will learn the hard way how it’s not prudent to screw your customers in their never-ending desire to make more money. Not to mention people who will leave the airline for others who don’t pull this lowlife move on their clients.
In my opinion, AA needs to clearly prioritize the original ticket holder, so any offer of the seat to a standby should only ever occur when that original flyer has absolutely missed boarding (ie they’re literally closing the doors and allow the standbys on at that moment). Anything less is acting like the standby has an equal right to the seat as the original flyer does, which they do not.
And where are all these standby’s coming from? Overbooking?
This happened to me! I ran, made my connection, and watched them give my seat away in Dallas. It was especially brutal to see them board everyone from standby while I was waiting for assistance, and then they sent the plane without me on it. I don’t care if a gate agent or a computer does this: it is simply called “involuntarily denied boarding” and AA needs to compensate us. They’re lying about what happened to me and telling me I was never on the plane, but I have my boarding pass and seat number saved. It’s practically impossible to get through to customer service, then they say that they won’t compensate. A lawyer is going to get really rich on this one.