American’s New App Says Everything Is “Green” — Even When Your Flight Is Canceled

I was supposed to fly to D.C. for work this week. Storms blanketed D.C. and Sunday nearly all flights into National airport were cancelled. The storm stretched to Texas and here in Austin roads were blanketed in ice. It got neither sunny nor warm enough to melt, and I wasn’t going to be able to fly out Monday morning.

Initially I moved my outbound to Monday late afternoon. There was a travel waiver in place, but American still wanted… $0.20 to change my flight.

Initially I saw a $150 upcharge for discounted upgrade on the longer segment out of Austin – that’s because about 30 hours out the first class cabin was half empty, and my upgrade cleared within a few hours. The shorter connecting flight was $88, and I judged that complimentary upgrade as less likely. I was tempted.

• In irregular ops-likely situations I’d never buy one of these in the past. The first class buy ups used to be non-refundable. In the event of cancellation, I didn’t want to have to chase the refund to make sure it happened (though it probably would). More importantly, there’s always the chance that I decide to bag the trip. Fortunately, now at least, American will issue credit on these upgrades.

• Still, it’s a non-meal flight and during weather events flights cancel and get rebooked, I just didn’t bother.

I figured that by Monday evening flights would be running more normally. However, an evening flight means greater risk of delays especially as operations recover. There were still going to be planes and crews out of position, since this storm affected multiple hubs – New York, Charlotte, Washington National, Dallas.

So it didn’t really surprise me that one of my segments cancelled about 24 hours out. I selected a new itinerary, and one segment cancelled 24 hours out again.

What was interesting was that the update to American’s website and app, intended to make things clearer and easier for flight recovery, just made things worse.

A week ago American Airlines introduced new color-coded banners and made other changes to its app and website.

Orange: Flight delayed
Red: Flight canceled
Green: Self-service rebooking available
Blue: We’re already working on your next flight with automatic reaccommodation or agent-assisted rebooking

They did not think through what happens when you’ve got successive cancellations. Up at the top, the app shows green. I’m rebooked! And there’s a green bar beside my… cancelled flight.

The website, too, shows ‘all green’ even though the flight that’s supposed to get me to my destination has been cancelled.

There are all sorts of complaints about American and other airlines on social media right now, but that’s not really fair. Flight delays and cancellations are the fault of weather, mostly. How they communicate with customers during these challenges is on them, however.

I’m glad to see updates to the app because even as an Executive Platinum I was facing two hour phone hold times. But there’s plenty of improvements still needed to the app. For instance, rebooking doesn’t give me the ability to hold onto my current first flight segment and choose only a new itinerary from the connecting point forward. I was only given the option to rebook the entire trip, which requires inventory for all flights to be available. I might even be willing to overnight along the way, but that’s not an option.

At simplest, though, it seems like when flights cancel the app and website should do what American says, and… turn red?