An American Airlines passenger showed up at the airport on time. Their flight took off on time and landed on time. They made it to their connecting gate – but the airline told them that because of a “delay” they wouldn’t be allowed to board. Their seat was given to someone else. And they were forced to add 7 hours onto their trip, flying to Dallas via Moline, Illinois.
On Thursday they flew from Traverse City to Chicago O’Hare, enroute to Dallas – Fort Worth. While still at the gate in Traverse City, they received an email from American Airlines saying they were “rebooked due to a delay.” Only there was no delay.
The flight was on time, and it still showed that way in the American Airlines app – so when they arrived in Chicago they went to their connecting gate.
I walk over to my original gate, where my ORD to DFW flight was to depart from, 20 minutes before [the start of] boarding, only to be told that the flight was full and I don’t have a seat. There wasn’t a delay at all. …I was supposed to arrive in DFW at 11am, but now due to this rebooking, I was flying from ORD to Moline, IL, and then Moline to DFW, except my arrival time in DFW is 5:45pm.
Actually, they had even more of a buffer than planned – the Chicago to Dallas flight was delayed!
The passenger complained to American Airlines. I believe that this is an involuntary denied boarding and under government rules they’re entitled to cash compensation.
- They had a confirmed reservation. They checked-in on time. They arrived at the departure gate on time.
- American couldn’t get them to their destination within one hour of the original flight’s arrival time.
- So they are entitled to 400% of the one-way fare, not to exceed $2,150. And this is payable in cash, not miles or vouchers.
He relays, though, that American says that since the rebooking was the result of a ‘delay’ no compensation was due.
What appears to have happened is that American’s system thought the passenger was going to misconnect, and they rebooked him proactively. They do this before customers actually miss their flight! That reduces the workload at the gate, which supports having just a single agent working at gates and saves money and it helps accommodate other passengers more quickly who may also have delayed or cancelled flights and need seats.
This is the AURA or “AUtomated ReAccommodation” tool and it works predictively. As American described it in internal documents,
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.
They take passengers off of flights who haven’t missed them yet, but where the airline is ‘certain’ they will misconnect, in order to give those seats to other passengers. “PRNG Update” in a reservation means that AURA tool has run:
However if the passenger was at their connecting gate at least 15 minutes prior to departure with a ticket and confirmed seat assignment, and American refuses boarding, Department of Transportation regulations do not have an ‘automated re-accommodation tool’ exception’.
I reached out to American about what happened with this reader, and an American spokesperson told me they’d get in touch with the customer,
We want all of our customers to have a positive experience during their travels with us. A member of our team will be in contact with the customer to learn more about their experience.
In fairness to the airline, two years ago I was hearing from customers who had things like this happen thanks to the automated re-accommodation tool more frequently than I do now. That could be random, or it could be that mistakes like this don’t happen as often. But for passengers that this happens to, it’s incredibly frustrating. I’m glad the airline will be in touch – far better than butting heads with customer service or having to submit a consumer complaint to DOT.
Yet, still, some of your corporate shills here deny that we need improved passenger rights legislation in the USA… fellas, admit it, you either are self-interested (like work for the airlines or a related industry that benefits from screwing over passengers), or you are ignorant of the ways in which passengers are wrongly taken advantage of by these massive companies, and then we, the consumer, have very little recourse, other partial refunds, if any, complaining to a recently further defanged regulator, credit card disputes, and suing these companies. We deserve better. EU261 and Canada’s APPR are a good start. Montreal Convention only applies to international flights, so it doesn’t help that much domestically. C’mon folks.
“PRNG” also stands for “Pseudo-Random Number Generator,” which is probably how that “rebooking” algorithm really works.
Technically, you also have to have a valid reservation for the flight, which, due to the pre-emptive rebooking, the passenger did not.
The unfortunate reality is the IDB rules are written in a way that makes them very subject to manipulation by the airlines.
Could have been worse… imagine misconnecting in Moline!
@1990, such “passenger rights” rules wouldn’t be required if the DoT wasn’t such a crony-capitalist shill for the incumbent carriers. Remove the regulations that protect AA, DL, UA, and WN. Then let’s see where things stand.
It’s so tiresome that the answer to problems created by government is … more government.
@ Gary — FAA complaint for IDB here.
@Christopher J Raehl, please re-read the post. He did have a valid reservation on the flight which American Airlines then cancelled and gave away his seat even though he was present and ready to board. This is all in the history of his original reservation, including the fact that he had a valid Boarding Pass for his original flight.
@roundtree — Yup, legalized corruption (dark money, lobbying, ‘gratuities,’ insider trading, offshoring, shadow companies, lending to the super wealthy with their stocks as collateral, and so on and so forth in this 2nd Gilded Age and global kleptocracy) sure does grind my gears, and should enrage the masses, too, if only they’d wake up and realize that it’s always been a class war masked as a culture war to distract us from the real issues. Looking forward to the second-coming of Theodore Roosevelt to bust some trusts and stop the robber barons, ushering in a second Progressive Era.
Submitting a complaint to the DOT is the only way to get a response from the major airlines. When things like this happen, I give the airline one opportunity to remedy it. Next, it’s a DOT complaint. I always hear back within a day or so. Usually, they just tell me to pound sand again, but it gives me a little bit of satisfaction. But the DOT complaint only takes about 45 seconds to file
@Rjb — As I said above, yes, complaints to regulators is often the next logical progression in these disputes; however, as with the CFPB being all but dissolved by this administration, anything consumer friendly, including the US DOT is not going to be more effective these days and for the foreseeable future. It’s a real concern for us frequent flyers who do more regularly face issues and are nearly powerless. That’s why I’ve advocated on here and elsewhere for years and years that we need real solutions, actual legislation, all of which should be non-partisan, yet, it doesn’t seem to get done. Whoever can actually get this done should earn a lot of praise from the traveling public (and probably a lot of scorn from Airlines for America, A4A, and its clients; importantly, not to be confused with airline unions, which are different, and may even be supportive of further protections for their members and passengers alike, because ultimately, this is big money vs. the little guys.)
1990 what has the cfpb done but redirect more revenue to the government and create a crony bureaucracy..
Interest rate usry is still legal.
The Left shrieks about ‘junk fees’ while enabling the system. Yet you always scream about Trump. How about the politicians that say one thing and then do another.
I believe the correct political term for you is ‘useful idiot’. That is when someone is propagandized against their best interests.
My experience is that the squeaky wheel always gets the grease at AA. And while the notion of literally writing out a real bank check for compensation is a thing of the past (but did happen right there on the spot!), it seems the monopoly money of choice for AA is to credit frequent flyer miles. And it’s negotiable. While cash would be preferred, that also takes a lot of time and hassle, whereas getting 10k (EASY!). , 25k (Doable) or even 50k+ miles (depends) is a lot easier and negotiable.
Every flight I’ve had with AA has had problems, insufficient crew, and twice has lead to me sleeping in an airport with a disability. I literally do all I can now to avoid flying AA. None of this nonsense surprises me.
This looks like too quick of a rebooking from the tool where a delay showed up on paper, but disappeared before it actually happened.
Flightstats shows that ~ 1 hour before departure there an estimated hour delay in arrival time popped up (but without a corresponding delay in departure time). There’s no explanation on the website, but if it wasn’t bad info (like making a mistake on time zone), it’s possible the weather Thursday morning was behind it.
https://www.flightstats.com/v2/flight-details/AA/3341?year=2025&month=5&date=1&flightId=1313086535
Airlines employ algos to do all of this because it’s far cheaper than humans. Gate agents generally won’t do much to change what the algo did. In theory if they reaccommodate you then there’s no denied boarding. By the airline’s algo you would not make that flight.
Not saying it’s right but people want 2025 fares but 1970 style customer service.
@ 1990 — Yeah, DOT not FAA, oops.
A passenger got screwed on American Airlines on a hub to hub flight. Why doesn’t any of that surprise me in 2025?
This past Thursday I expected to get denied boarding to my connection in CLT. The flight I was arriving on into CLT landed 20 minutes early, yet became nearly 30 minutes late due to having to sit on the ground in CLT waiting for a gate. (Another case of “land early and get punished.”) I sprint from a 6:53p gate arrival at B10 to C5 getting there just as the clock strikes 7p for a scheduled 7:15p flight, and the gate agent ALLOWS me to board. I was both astonished and thrilled. And she let another passenger board after me who came from the same inbound flight as me. My thanks to that CLT gate agent.
Was this an edge case and the door would have closed at 7:01? I do not know. I thought the door closed at the start of the 15th minute prior, not the end of the 15th minute prior. This time running to the gate paid off. It may not always in the future.
I don’t expect my EP status to count for anything anymore.
I don’t view DOT complaints as other than a last resort, but when the facts and the T&C say one thing and the response from he airline is basically “our system says ‘no’”, they have been effective for me. Basically, if you can catch the airline making a false statement like “he had no reservation” while omitting that it is because their system unilaterally deleted it, you will pretty quickly win at that point. Just be lawyerly and factual and show your evidence. Keep in mind the DOT sees a lot of frivolous complaints. And no, I don’t think the DOT is handling them much different this year.
The IDB rules are clearly defined. Give the carrier the opportunity to make it right then hit them with the DOT complaint and since it’s so easy to do it right at the gate in front of everyone. Then get rebooked and based on the rebooking and need for accommodations document everything including names, times, locations etc.
Next is filing a court action and asking for a jury trial which is doable in most jurisdictions when the dispute involves more than 20 bucks. Hire a lawyer if you don’t want to mess with it yourself
With clear documentation the airline will want to settle and pay immediately. They will not in most cases take a chance of a jury awarding punitive damages and you ask for reimbursement of all expenses and attorney fees plus the IDB compensation due by law. And remember that courts hate cases on their docket that are clearly an abuse of a large company versus an individual so many judges will push hard for a settlement conference from the outset.
Same with baggage issues. There is a reason many airlines initially wanted to ban air tags because it documents their failure to properly handle the items in their custody to the point where Lufthansa was removing air tags from luggage for a while until they were sued and had their butts handed to them.
There are more of us than there are of them so let’s be willing to fight them and do it where it hurts them which is using the tools we have.
And give them the benefit of the doubt when they make a real effort to fix stuff or when things are beyond their control. Like yelling at gate agents because of a thunderstorm….
Which airline does not give up your seat when you’re not present to board your flight? Or, when you ask to be placed on an earlier flight, and another passenger has not made the flight, would you prefer letting that seat remain open and you not allowed to board that flight?
I’d like to see the mandatory compensation tripled in cases like this. I don’t really care about the money but there needs to be greater emphasis on forcing the airlines to treat passengers better than they currently do.
We all know who to never fly with!!!! I WOULD NOT BOOK THEM FOR ABSOLUTELY ANY REASON ATP!!!!!!
@George: “Not saying it’s right but people want 2025 fares but 1970 style customer service.”
In the case of Southwest, we want 2024 fares.
I Rarely fly anymore. Due to recent time constraints, I had to fly in Reagan in Washington DC. The service was average. It wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t outstanding. Service was the forefront of AA many years ago. Now it’s just do enough to get by. I also noticed a lot more DEI hires than from in the past. One ticket agent was wearing her protective mask and was absolutely rude and refused to help people. It crap like this is why flying makes me think Greyhound now is flying.
You couldn’t pay me to fly AA right now. Their whole company is falling apart!
I would agree this was IDB. Passenger was there at proper time, had had a confirmed reservation that the airline unilaterally cancelled without request, and was denied boarding without consent and was then delayed for hours from reaching his final destination. It seems cut and dried.
Maybe a few penalties like this will cause them to tighten the algorithm. Again, another way American treats passengers as a necessary evil.
Why not do the obvious, take them to small claims court? I did it twice with Northworst. Won both times. Presented facts and documentation. In neither case did the airline rebut me.
Make sure you do not bring in lawyer. Do it yourself.
It’s not just American. We hit this on a joint BA/AA itinerary in March – we were supposed to fly CDG-LHR-DFW. We hit delays leaving CDG and BA moved us to a LHR-CLT-DFW connection. We went to our original gate for our original flight before boarding started and were told we couldn’t be placed back because BA had control of the ticket and our bags had been rerouted. We were willing to be separated from our luggage and to pick it up later at home but we were told we couldn’t do that. No compensation from either airline except for a £15 voucher we didn’t have time to use at Heathrow. This was despite texting AA about being protected while sitting on the runway at CDG. This is very much the modus operandi and the intention – making sure people aren’t stranded when seats are limited is noble but the execution doesn’t allow for the edge cases.
I agree that we should be lobbying for similar protections in the US as EU 261 but that will take both a lot of coordinated customer effort and government support – neither of which exist right now.
Its the inevitable result of giving airlines too much power in the name of security. They know you can’t complain because some thugs will carry you off to jail for being ‘disruptive’ and you’ll likely end up on all sorts of no-fly or other blacklists. So they squeeze and squeeze — fares, fees, inadequate accommodation on the planes (and last, but by no means least, the workforce — gate agents aren’t born bad for the most part but their employers make them that way).
No real solution except that for any lightly or unregulated monopoly (limited choice in airlines means de-facto monopoly). Some kind of serious regulation, plus a critical look at the books of the entire industry. Aviation is one of those industries that’s awash in money but constantly struggles to make a profit, something that suggests the business model is ‘leaky’ with too much revenue siphoned off in ‘necessary business costs’ (i.e. lost en route).
For sure a DoT complaint, but the other major remedy that works is publicity on X (Twitter). Gary, you’ve got a large following on X, if you published this case on X the AA Team that monitors it would respond in seconds to DM them.
Considering who’s in office right now and how they’re trying to remove anything that holds a company accountable for any kind of misdesd or problem, I expect things to get way worse. It’s really terrible but for most of these carriers the only thing that makes them stop bad behavior is bleeding cash. That hits their bottom line quickly. Never flying a carrier again threats are pretty Hollow because lots of the time you don’t have a choice. Making them pay multiples of the ticket cost starts to bite them hard and they have to rethink things because somebody’s department’s going to start having to answer questions. I wish we could see some real consumer protection with regard to the issues but they’re trying to dismantle everything right now.
They should file a complaint anyway.
I’ll not an analogous thing I read about, when banks could hold check deposits for 14 days (left over regulation from when they were physically mailed to clearing houses and all that), one of the big banks thought it was real cute to hold them for 13 days (to increase the chance the person would overdraft and they could charge overdraft fees.) Their computers went down for 2 or 3 days, so it took 15 days to deposit their check. The account holder asked for the penalty they were owed under law for late deposit, the bank’s like “Hey, the computer was down, that’s out of our hands.” They filed a complaint and the agency rightly pointed out “Holding checks until seconds before the legal maximum is not out of your hands” and gave them a nice fine (and had them pay restitution to the account holder.)
I wouldn’t expect the airline to quit using this system — it may work fine 99% of the time. But involuntarily bumping someone, then futzing with their records to avoid paying what they owe for an involuntary bump, is ridiculous and it should be on file with the regulatory agency they are doing this even if they ultimately decide to pay what they owe. Denying to pay initially would be enough for me to file a complaint.
IDB.
rationalize it all you want. it’s still IDB.
AA owes the pax the 400%+.
If you have anything to say of substance go start a website called “sucking up to American Airlines” and post it there.
I’ve had it with the bullshit rationalization here.
If you can’t tell the truth keep your damn mouth shut. Oh, your website, so you can lie? Do it in private. Here we call it like it is.
Please follow up with this passenger. I wouldn’t trust AA to make it right just because they say they will contact them now. The passenger should file a complaint with the DOT if they do not get quick and adequate resolution, followed by taking AA to court if needed.
Moline, Moline, Moline, Moline…
Don’t you take my flight from me!
I’ve had this happen to me and a traveling companion on a AGS-CLT-DCA itinerary. We were on a GSA-contract fare, which is supposed to be “last available seat”, yet they gave our seats away, even though we arrived at the connecting gate before boarding started. The gate agent did not want to discuss IDB rules or refunds. She put us at the top of the stand-by list, and we luckily cleared, but that means somebody else didn’t fly.
@American: I did read the post. They changed his reservation. Passenger no longer has confirmed reserved space, technically no IDB. He was ticketed on the flight to Moline, which he was able to board.
The way the IDB rules are written they’re basically swiss cheese.
“It’s so tiresome that the answer to problems created by government is … more government.”
Correct! Every time you call for the government to “do something,” you’re admitting that you’ve run out of good ideas, creative solutions, and cooperation. Rather, let’s just turn to force and violence.
@Jon Biedermann. Compensation of 10k, 25k, or 50K miles . . . I don’t think so. Show me the money or add a zero to those numbers.
Sault Saint Marie – Traverse City – Detroit then Los Angeles. In the winter.
Guaranteed there will be a delay. Travel balances out. – sometimes your receive the Aura released inventory sometimes you giveth.
If this was Delta or United, Gary would be highly critical. But since its AA, he once again proves he is a AA corp shill and basically whitewashed the entire ordeal. I would hitch hike barefooted across a desert before flying AA again. They make Spirit airlines look like a 5 star airline any given day.
I wonder how many of the corporate shills here, especially the ones carrying water for America West, fka American Airlines, are actually paid to defend their overlord on a random blog….vs those simply hoping to be rewarded like a stray dog lapping at a restaurant table pining for scraps.
I really wonder.
@roundtree, what’s really tiresome is overly simplistic solutions, like “get rid of the regulation that protect the airlines”. What specific regulations? What current rules exist that you think we should eliminate?
When the Airlines pull these weasel-deals, if the airline doesn’t make it right within 24 hours, take it to Official Channels. 1. File FAA complaint. 2. File complaint with DOT. 3. File compliant with State Dept of Consumer Affairs. And, 4. file a suit for damages with local Small Claims Court. Make the airline defend 4 major complaints so they get the message.
I am divorcing AA, primarily because I moved from the VMD
area (where Reagan was my convenient choice) to Houston, TX where AA does not have convenient direct routes to any destination without connecting in Dallas. By the way “Al”, are you really going with the whole “DEI” reason to back off AA? lol. Remember that
DEI includes women, veterans, handicapped persons and others..Only white, heterosexual men with no physical handicaps are non- DEI hires. Your racism is showing.
Situations like this cause people to contemplate doing a “Mangionne” on airline execs.
American did that to my family, also in O’Hare. Our tickets were cancelled while we were in mid-air, but we landed, disembarked, and reached the gate (which was conveniently next to our arrival gate) before they shut the doors. We couldn’t even get meal vouchers for the 10 hours we were stuck in O’Hare.
Years ago on an early morning flight from Chicago to New Orleans , we were told to arrive 90 minutes before we were there almost two hours before yo find the gate packed with people. Our seats were gone. They were reserved months before so the three of us could sit together. They told us we would have to wait for a seat. My friends got their seat but would not board without me They were told if they did not board they would lose their seat. Mine came through at the last minute. So much for rules and obeying them.
I did contract work for AA five years ago. They had a decent CEO then. But, now the focus seems to be the fill every seat on every flight no matter what. There is this fear that an empty seat is very very bad. They have algorithms that predict how many people will not show up for each flight!
American Airlines is the absolute worst….. I fly every week and avoid them when at all possible. Literally every time I have had to flu them there was an issue, and getting support is next to impossible.