American Airlines is making it easier for passengers to receive meal vouchers they’re entitled to when a flight delay of 3 or more hours is the airline’s fault.
- When the delay or cancellation is caused by American, AA says it will rebook customers and, upon request, provide hotel vouchers for overnight delays away from home, hotel transportation, and meal vouchers if the delay is 3+ hours after scheduled departure.
- In contrast, when the disruption is beyond American’s control (e.g. weather, air traffic control) passengers are responsible for their own overnight accommodations, meals, and incidental expenses.
Electronic vouchers replaced paper in 2018. But the system required an agent to trigger the offer and manually qualify the customer.
And there was an email address problem, where the booking email might belong to an assistant, family member, or travel arranger rather than the stranded passenger. Getting them through the app and website is an improvement.
In a move towards much greater efficiency, American Airlines now lets agents hand out meal vouchers in bulk, to an entire flight at a time – not just passenger-by-passenger.
There’s no new passenger entitlement. They aren’t raising the value of meal vouchers. But this fixes the process of passengers lining up to request these.
The HMT “Flight Level Meals” tool now lets Superusers issue meal vouchers to an entire eligible flight, or multiple reservations, in a single transaction. Superusers can also review historical delay codes and override eligibility. More More people who are entitled to vouchers should get them. It’s still just $12, though, and that doesn’t go very far.
Interestingly, the advisory flags qualifying flights having 3 hour delays with at least “90 minutes controllable.” The published rule is a 3-hour delay that’s controllable (the airline’s fault). The actual internal rule is a 3-hour delay, where at least 90 minutes is the airline’s fault.
- This solves for mixed-cause delays.
- Say a flight is delayed 45 minutes by weather, then 100 minutes by maintenance, then another 45 minutes by crew availability – that’s 2 hours 15 minutes that’s controllable, and 45 minutes by weather. The three hour delay isn’t all controllable!
- But a customer should still get the voucher. That’s potentially customer-friendly versus requiring all 3 hours to be controllable.
- This is also why Superusers are given historical delay code visibility and override power.
I certainly prefer these vouchers over the old ‘refresh and refuel carts’ that US Airways management imposed a dozen years ago as a cost-saving measure, where they’d roll out chips, fruit and bottles of water to gates with delayed flights.
The Mix ‘n Munch snack boxes they handed out cost just $1.47 so a lot less than $12 per passenger (reduced by breakage). The snack boxes that didn’t get taken could be saved, with a 90-day shelf life. Meal vouchers came back under DOT pressure in 2022.
$12 doesn’t go very far at airport prices. You might not use the voucher if you’re eating in a lounge. But you can load the value onto your Starbucks card. (Chick-fil-A and Panera can work, too.)
So pathetic that people beg for these crumbs instead of taking care of themselves. I’ve always held that if you can afford to travel you should be able to afford the cost of the inevitable disruptions. Otherwise just stay at home. God I hate cheap people
AA has been doing that for a couple years now if the flight is cancelled within their control. I’ve not gotten any voucher of any kind for a severely delayed flight. Pre COVID AA used to roll out a sandwich cart even when it was a weather delay. But that like other things never came back.
You have to give AA credit for this. Even if it is a small and token amount, the mere act of quickly doing something to indicate ownership for a problem for a large group of people goes a long ways.
I am bullish that AA is serious about turning themselves around operationally.
We really could have multiple high quality US airlines (yes, still US) in a few years.
The twelve dollars is no windfall and certainly nothing healthy.
Hey, Gary, you know what’d be even better than this noise… EU261-equivalent. Don’t worry about $20 meal vouchers. Get $250-700, instead, depending on duration/route. There’s a better way, friends.
@1990 – EU261 seems great on paper until you try to go collect
@Gary Leff — Seriously? Yes, you usually have to submit a form. Yes, you sometimes have to appeal, when airlines pretend to try to get out of their obligations. Right, it should be automatic, streamlined, and even further improved. So, let’s not make ‘perfect’ the enemy of ‘good.’ Because, right now, we have next to no protections in the US; no compensation scheme here. If you don’t trust the Europeans or UK, please consider APPR in Canada as another good example of how other countries are doing this way better than we are in the US right now.
Years ago, I was on a delayed flight out of JFK on DL. They had a boarding pass scanning station. Scanned my pass and it spit out a $25 (I think) voucher with a debit card number good for 24 hours. There had been no announcement, so I, of course, informed all the attractive solo females waiting for the flight. I used mine the next day at a local bar.
American Airlines Superusers should wear a cape like Superman. This helps passengers to quickly identify employees who have the power and are deemed worthy to override their system when necessary to issue a $12 food voucher due to an at-fault American Airlines flight delay.
@This comes to mind — ‘And then… everyone clapped…’ (must be an Ohio-thing)