When American Airlines sells you something and doesn’t deliver it, their position is often that they get to keep the money. If what they don’t deliver is something they promised as part of your ticket then it isn’t covered by the Department of Transportation’s new rules on fees.
- First class promises a meal but doesn’t obligate American to provide it. A ticket means travel, not travel in an actual seat. When a customer complained that their flight didn’t get the promised meal in first class, American said “Our ticket price reflects the cost of transportation. Any meals and snacks served on our flights are considered complimentary conveniences.”
- Coach class promises transportation, but doesn’t obligate American to provide a seat for it.
When a mom flew American Airlines from Portland to Dallas to Tallahassee with her two 18 month old twins, she bought one of them a seat (only one child is allowed to fly on her lap). A flight attendant wouldn’t allow her to use the seat, claiming (incorrectly) that children under two weren’t allowed in seats without a car seat. Fortunately a friendly stranger helped out, letting one of the kids fly on their lap. American refused to refund the paid seat – claiming that the child had received transportation.
If you purchase an extra legroom or other ‘preferred’ seat on the seat map, and you don’t get to use it, American has to refund the seat fee. But American also sells ‘fare bundles’. The Main Plus fare comes with an extra legroom seat, checked bag, and earlier boarding.
If American doesn’t give you the extra legroom seat you’ve chosen, that you’ve purchased as part of that fare, they… won’t refund the money. The airline says that since it’s a “bundled package” they don’t provide refunds when they fail to deliver the products included with the bundle.
Buyer Beware: when you purchase a Main Cabin Extra seat on @AmericanAir, what do you think you are purchasing? Most would say "a seat with more legroom"
That's wrong. My wife recently paid for MCE, but the seat was broken, so they moved her to economy, and won't give a refund pic.twitter.com/4FRFFTrKtM
— Jeremy 'adjusted for inflation' Horpedahl (@jmhorp) June 26, 2024
Here's the page describing the bundle of services. No mention that you might not get the seat you paid for!https://t.co/cx3gtrmrbM
— Jeremy 'adjusted for inflation' Horpedahl (@jmhorp) June 26, 2024
Beware buying American Airlines Main Plus fares! Airlines advertise one thing to convince you to buy a ticket, and to spend more. And they deliver something else. One of the most common occurrences is advertising their most comfortable seats to get you to spend more to upgrade from coach to first class, and then delivering something entirely different.
For instance this was a pitch to upgrade to first class on a standard American Airlines domestic Airbus A321. You’re shown a lie flat seat that’s only on the Airbus A321T which operates mostly between New York JFK and premium West Coast markets.
Customers spending the extra money based on what American shows them get this instead:
And too often they get this:
People often blame deregulation for problems with airlines, but that misunderstands the issue. Many problems actually stem from the Airline Deregulation Act itself, but it’s not lack of rules in the industry. Airlines are one of the most heavily regulated industries in the country. The Department of Transportation just issued new rules over how airlines handle fees. But they don’t apply to bundled fares.
Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has interpreted the Airline Deregulation Act’s pre-emption of state-level regulation of schedules and pricing to also mean that most common law tort claims against airlines are pre-empted as well.
While myriad federal rules for airlines have largely grown over the past 46 years, regulation via tort is lacking. Customers have a much harder time suing an airline. Airlines are no longer subject to common law duties of good faith and fair dealing.
The problem is that AA is just a hot mess right now and leadership doesn’t prioritize good customer service, attention to detail, or inflight product. “But the network…” Let’s see what Q2 financials look like vs DL and UA when they come out.
“The company offered to attempt to deliver the message, by camel caravan or snail back, or some equally streamlined method, if convenient, but in event of failure the company was not responsible….Since then all my contracts have been worded on the same principle.”
–Robert A. Heinlein, “The Main Who Sold the Moon” (1949). In which a corporate head describes the contract on the back of the telegram form he read when as a teenager he delivered messages. Some things never change.
In most other cases, this would be called ‘Bait and Switch.’
That’s a lie, because the computer knows if your seat was moved and will automatically refund your card.
Nice premium foot rest!
Last week the American kiosk offered to check a bag for $40. We declined and the kiosk promptly said our flight would run out of carryon space and offered to check the bag at no cost.
I’m Lifetime Platinum. Ran into this exact thing. Sprang for a first class seat. No meal served on a 3 hour early morning flight and WiFi wasn’t working. Asked for compensation and was told, “thank you for bringing this to our attention”.
So yesterday was offered a very reasonable $194 upgrade on a Bos-DFW flight. And I politely thought, “pound sand”. You can have my cash when you demonstrate you care.
Hopefully AA and Southwest all go under and soon so the US flyers will flock to the world’s #1 PREMIUM airline!
Great article. Just another example of how the AA C-Suite is tone deaf to their customers. When will they start doing the right thing? That’s ok, just reinforces the adage “Ignore your customers, don’t worry, they’ll go away”.
@Timothy Dunn Jr, fewer airlines is not a good thing.
Children under 2 years of age must travel in a approved car seat when occupying a seat.
I worked for American Airlines for over 34 years. This does not surprise me. They are an amoral entity.
@Charles – nope.
https://www.aa.com/i18n/travel-info/special-assistance/traveling-children.jsp
“Additional infants under 2 years old must be ticketed and occupy an infant safety seat or in a separate aircraft seat.”
There is only United and delta ,what do you expect from a company who pay a uge bonus and don’t care about anything else?????
You forgot to mention they will downgrade you from first class to economy and claim the coach fare on day of departure was more than you and probably anyone on the airplane paid for a ticket so no refund is due.
Also, your flight out of DFW may be cancelled but due to it being caused by a purported rain shower in Bangladesh a week ago no hotel or meal reimbursement is due.
AA executive suite believes and has preached their only obligation under their contract of carriage is to take as much of your money as they can and to deliver the least possible.
Any failures on their part to deliver at any minimal level are your problem as you have been mistaken to entrust them with your travel arrangements.
@Michael,
Yes they are…in fact, all US airlines need to go bankrupt or merge with with the world’s #1 PREMIUM airline
Timothy Dumb Jr. – Southwest isn’t going anywhere.
Gary ! can you explain why a business such as American Airlines, which takes in billions of dollars a year would risk bad publicity as exemplified in your article rather than refund a pittance to a paying customer?
Good to know AA is a terrible airline.. will stick to AlaskaAir even though I’ve lost my Elite status
@rick — No surprise here: “penny wise; pound foolish.” They can’t look past the next quarterly report to the shareholders.
@Timothy Dunn Jr, fewer airlines is not a good thing.
Wrong! All you or anyone else need is the world’s premier carrier, Delta
We need a grass roots group of flyers who will HOUND some of these airlines and auto rental agencies (looking at you, Hertz) on social media. Every. Single. Day. Get a few hundred people to reply to every post they make on Twitter/X, Facebook, etc., with statements that they’re a bunch of thieves and whores. Well, maybe just thieves. And harass our politicians who are in a position to do something about it (ideally more than some grandstanding hearing in DC).
Recently had booked international flight thru Miami. A few days before travel there was offer in AA app to upgrade flight to Miami to 1st class fir $94. Since two bags were being checked and 2nd bag costs $100, upgraded to 1st class and got 2nd checked bag free. Did same on return flight, upgraded and actually saved money!! Also had priority checkin so skipped long checkin line!!
AA has grabbed the distinction of America’s worst airline, beating out Spirit and other low-budget carriers. Despite the CEO’s declarations, AA continues to secure its commitment to the company’s mission, “It’s not about treating customers fairly, it’s only about profit.”
Deregulation at its finest… It’ll be good for the flying public they said… I miss the days of the business traveler. Airline balance sheets were at their peak and the stock was stratospheric unlike now… And passengers behaved and didn’t give any lip.
DEREGULATION Is literally the reason WHY you can’t sue airlines and therefore they get away with this kind of junk.
Don’t trust me: read the Supreme Court’s decision in Northwest v. Ginsberg.
And if we get more deregulation, things are going to get worse: airlines are trying to be able to advertise fake pricing set without mandatory junk fees that they decide to set, which would be really, really, really bad.
American Airlines has become so thoroughly enshittified the only winning move in their game is not to play. I feel for people living in Dallas or Charlotte because American sees them not as customers but as human ATMs. At one time Southwest was a good alternative in Dallas but their enshittification is also moving apace. Southwest at least wants to rehab themselves; American Airlines is like a sociopath who doesn’t mind using and abusing everyone they come in contact with.
Delta does this, also. Booked 1st class, LAX to MSP. Flight was cancelled an hour before boarding, was rebooked on another flight, middle seat economy. (Im 6’6″, 260lbs. Not good) Took days to get a paltry credit of like $200 on a future flight. Cost difference was far beyond that.
Lufthansa engages in this thievery scamming, as well, as I dealt with it on a couple trans -atlantic flights this year.
Too many airlines merged into only three — AA, UA, DL. It’s time to break them into smaller pieces like they did with Ma Bell in the early 1980s.