American’s regional carrier PSA, which it owns, cancelled 3000 flights in a week when their computer systems in Dayton, Ohio melted down.
American Airlines is patting employees on the back for how they handled the crisis. And indeed it was hard on employees who were called in early for their shifts to deal with the backlog of rebookings, and who had to deal with unhappy customers that boarded flights and were then held for hours waiting for the manual release of their flight — which may never have come. They had no way to know whether a flight would be dispatched until it happened (or got cancelled).
Here’s what American is saying to employees:
While the front line may have done well, management did not. American stuck it to customers flying mostly in and out of Charlotte for days on end while refusing to issue a travel waiver.
American’s systems apparently don’t allow for waivers to apply only to PSA customers, or to customers only on a specific range of flight numbers (which would have had the same effect). Instead passengers had to wait for hours at the airport to find out whether flights would cancel or roll the dice and not go — but if their flights traveled they’d be out the money for their tickets.
The airline was unwilling to risk some customer flying to Charlotte but not on PSA being able to change a ticket with no fee — someone, somewhere might have gotten a benefit from the ordeal — so they wouldn’t issue a Charlotte waiver.
And now American says they’re doing a comprehensive review of PSA’s systems, notably they aren’t saying they are doing a review of the systems of all of their regional carriers. However Barn. Door. Shut. already on that one.
American should be auditing the systems of all of their Eagle carriers including those that they don’t own, too. Indeed it’s shocking there aren’t comprehensive systems audits to begin with.
Poor handling of this by AA.
I’d be lying if I said I don’t enjoy seeing AA twist in the wind. What a cluster. Someone should give Doug a special stock award for not issuing any refunds or fee waivers.
Gary, thanks for the coverage.
AA screwed up really badly on this. The lack of waivers was just lunacy. Don’t hose your customers for your own mistakes.
Everyone-gets-a-trophy syndrome at its finest.
Complete incompetence starting from the top. Heads should be rolling at tge management level.
Not up to AA to decide whether to issue waivers. DOT, credit card companies, and/or FTC have the leverage to protect consumers from a practice whereby an airline, or any business, financially benefit’s from their own mistake. If you used an AA credit card to purchase your ticket, you have even more leverage with Citi or Barclays to get a fee waiver or refund.
This problem may not be AA’s fault, but it is not the customer’s fault either.
Complete incompetence starting from the top. Heads should be rolling at tge management level.If you used an AA credit card to purchase your ticket, you have even more leverage with Citi or Barclays to get a fee waiver or refund.
This problem may not be AA’s fault, but it is not the customer’s fault either.
My sister and her son were stranded in Charlotte. He was going to a school related competition in Savannah. Ended up having a friend drive from Savannah to get them. The AA customer service person cancelled out the rest of her ticket and told her they would refund each 12500 for return flight, 3100 each for the Charlotte to Savannah leg and refund her seat upgrades and close in booking fee. They have only refunded 3100 each and they sent an email saying they were gifting her 15000 points for her trouble – not 15000 each. The travel insurance she bought on AA, said they won’t cover anything because the tickets were cancelled. The credit card charges have not been reversed.
A small personal step in the right direction is to avoid Charlotte, ground zero in general for the residue of misery left from the USAir operations. You can only do what you can do.
Also a rotten place to reenter the country in my experience, with notably ill-tempered, petulant HSA/TSA … and then of course probably connect on PSA.
It’s incredible how AA manages to get worse and worse. They might as well change their name back to US Airways to make finish it off.
Quote: ‘Again, we are taking a very detailed look at how this happened and how we can prevent something like this from happening in the future across all of the AA companies.’
How is that not saying they are doing a review of the systems of all of their regional carriers?