A cascading delay into Los Angeles was about to keep travelers from reaching the funeral of the Sydney rabbi killed in the Bondi Beach attacks. United wouldn’t hold its flight—but American Airlines did something airlines almost never do: it moved gates to eliminate the terminal scramble, held its own Sydney departure, and then comped a new ticket entirely. What followed was a behind-the-scenes relay from cockpit to operations to the gate that turned an impossible connection into a just-in-time arrival for the funeral.
American Airlines has started holding flights for connecting passengers when possible, in limited circumstances. For one customer, though, they went further than I recall any airline going before.
The grieving passenger was about to miss Sydney. The airline pulled off a sequence that reads like fiction: a gate swap to eliminate a terminal sprint, a crew-and-ops relay waiting at the door, and a transpacific departure that stayed on the ground just long enough to get him onboard—at no charge—so he could make it to a funeral on time.
Dan’s Deals relays the story of four longtime friends chatting in a WhatsApp group they’ve kept going since school, despite living in different cities (Los Angeles, Miami, Brooklyn, and Sydney). They kept connected through Sydney Rabbi Eli Schlanger, who was chatting in the group.
News broke of the Bondi Beach attack in Sydney where a terrorist hit the “Chanuka by the Sea” event. Rabbi Eli Schlanger is killed. His wife is badly wounded, and their infant is struck by shrapnel.
VIDEO: Crowds flee as gunshots ring out at Sydney’s Bondi Beach pic.twitter.com/NSAjd5Itzx
— Avi Mayer אבי מאיר (@AviMayer) December 14, 2025
Insane footage shows a bystander attacking and disarming one of the terrorists, who appears to have been armed with a long rifle, during today’s shooting attack on an event celebrating Hanukkah at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia. pic.twitter.com/mJceco22bJ
— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) December 14, 2025
“We can’t turn off our menorahs!”
This interview made me cry.
Every Jewish person needs to watch this. pic.twitter.com/lgH6VOxjGR
— Yaakov Langer (@jacklanger) December 17, 2025
The three friends in the U.S. decided they needed to get to Sydney, even though they did’nt know the funeral would even be there. They booked United award tickets using transferred Chase points. Then:
- One passenger books New York JFK – Los Angeles on American to connect to United 839.
- Another books Miami – Los Angeles on American.
They were going to meet up for that United flight, but connecting times began collapsing. New York JFK – Los Angeles ran on time, but the Miami flight faced rolling delays. It looked like he wasn’t going to make the separate ticket on United.
While the JFK passenger waited in Los Angeles, he messaged American on Twitter about the situation, asking for help. American’s twitter team may not have the personality and sense of humor that it had years ago, but I find they’re the best at responsiveness and assisting with travel issues in real time (Delta, by the way, is the least responsive of the major carriers.)
American’s Twitter team messaged back that they’d alerted Los Angeles on the ground and suggested asking United for help as well. United is, after all, the first who rolled out ‘ConnectionSaver’ to hold flights.
Credit: Dan’s Deals
Two of the friends met at the United gate and spoke with the agent there. They already had the Miami passenger’s boarding pass printed and notes on his inbound American flight. They weren’t going to hold the flight, but they would stay alert for options.
Onboard that flight from Miami to L.A., a flight attendant brought that passenger a note: American has coordinated with United, can’t hold United 839, but American will hold their own LA – Sydney flight if he wants to buy a ticket for it.
- American’s Sydney flight departs from the Tom Bradley terminal. The Miami flight was supposed to come into terminal 4.
- American changed the Miami flight arrival to the Bradley terminal to save time.
- He was also moved forward on the plane to get off first.
- Ground staff was waiting for “the Sydney passenger,” takes him straight to the gate, and even asks for a quick photo.
At the gate, American tells him they’re not just accommodating him, they’re comping his ticket to Sydney. That American flight pushed back for Sydney 19 minutes after the Miami flight blocked in.
Both the United and American flights made announcements asking everyone to remain seated so these passengers could get off first. They had to head straight to the Rabbi’s funeral. Both airlines provided escorts through immigration and customs. On landing they learned the funeral time, and arrived moments before the funeral began.
DansDeals contacted American to verify the story. They confirmed the account and shared,
We’re proud of our teams in Los Angeles and Sydney, in our Integrated Operations Center and across American for living out our shared purpose of caring for people on life’s journey. Often, that mission is fulfilled quietly — behind the scenes and in life’s most difficult moments — one customer at a time.
I have to give it to American, that’s caring for people on life’s journey. It wasn’t a great slogan, but they made it work. While I have had my share of criticisms of American, I’ve also found them to go above and beyond doing the right thing on many occasions (and even at scale, for instance they were one of the best honoring refund rules at the start of the pandemic).
Changing a gate on arrival is plausible. Gates get swapped constantly – but not usually for a passenger. Seats get moved forward for quick deplaning when available, and crew frequently ask passengers to stay seated for passengers with short connections. Airlines meet passengers as they deplane for tight connections – though usually only VIPs and high revenue passengers (in American’s case, ConciergeKey customers).
Holding an international long-haul departure for a single passenger is a big ask:
- crew duty limits
- pushback/taxi sequencing
- passengers already onboard
- weight & balance calculations
- conflicts with an inbound aircraft using that gate next
- onward connections in Sydney
Making this all work with a 19-minute inbound-to-outbound connection was exceptional. And that’s before they comped a walkup transpacific ticket.
hurrah for American Airlines!!
This was fabulous and the first “way to go AA” story i have read in years. If they only were like this even 5% of the time it would make a huge difference in perception. For once they were always awful but Awesome American. Great opening for the new year.
American catches a lot of flak but this was a truly good story about offering help and compassion. Let’s hope it is a sign of things to come in the New Year from them.
Lastly, condolences to those victims in Bondi.
This story reminds me of the old American Airlines and before Doug Parker and the rest of the idiots from the old US Air senior management ran it into ground. Makes me think may be there is hope.
AA good for you.
Surprising indeed that it was AA the one that went to such lenghts…that bought them som good kAArmAA
“United wouldn’t hold its flight—but American Airlines did something airlines almost never do”… yeah, this is an outlier.
I’d imagine there are stories where UA did someone a solid, while AA or another airline did not. Airlines do not do this for everyone because if they did they’d never be on-schedule. Glad it worked out for these travelers.
This is how airlines are supposed to do bereavement (not price gauge, or demand others give up their miles like UA was, and Gary posted about twice in December).
I once worked for Midwest Express…. we held at the MKE hub for all connecting passengers, always. And ran 35% on-time. So…
But great for AA here. There’s also the fact they got a lot of free marketing for the cost of one seat that was going to add $0 by going empty otherwise. I’m okay with that… clearly someone recognized this was an important event, and even if they had the thought of “this’ll replay well” I’m okay with that as that is smart business. Whoever had the authority to comp the ticket wasn’t a front line manager. It’s a nice win for AA and great for the passenger. We also don’t know why UA couldn’t/wouldn’t hold the flight. They could have had their own constraints preventing holding… that night it looks like 40-50 minute taxi-out times were happening at LAX.
Meanwhile in 2025 on AA I was rebooked off of a connecting flight onto one 5 hours later due to anticipated delay, we were released by MX faster than anticipated, AA wouldn’t move me back as “ETA still says….”, and I made it to my original connection in CLT while they weren’t even started with general boarding and was told “flight is full now” and I would have had to add myself to standby in the app. I guess the opposite situation? But hey, maybe there’s a sign that AA employees have more empowerment to actually make common sense decisions. You know what airline would have not had a problem putting me back onto the flight and probably still gave me my upgrade? US Airways.
This is truly an incredible story and I encourage you all to read the story on DansDeals as well to get all the details.
The AA flight that waited for the passenger actually made it to Sydney a few minutes early and before the United flight that left much earlier.
Great job by American. With the delays from Miami, it is possible that other passengers were benefitted by having a gate at the Tom Bradley International Terminal. There are a number of flights leaving to eastern Asia destinations late at night and even after midnight at times. Also, with favorable conditions, trans Pacific flights can arrive quite early. Maybe such a condition was part of the plan to still get the rest of the passengers to the destination on time even with the delayed departure.
What a wonderful story at the end of a terrible situation The system works for the benefit of it’s customers and I appreciate that.
wow, that’s that quite honorable. I’m wondering why UA won’t hold the flight. I mean just a few minutes late wouldn’t affect them that much as there’s already such a buffer at Sydney to depart back to LAX. I never had that great of an impression of AA and I actually fly to Sydney a lot on Qantas and UA. I might now just give AA a try.
The Rabbi at Shul told me about this this morning. What an amazing story. Kudos to American and also to United for their help to those on the flight. So glad it worked for them, so sad they had to be making the trip. Shabbat Shalom.
Nice story.
BTW, while AA is not my preferred airline, the AA twitter team is the best by far. I always get a fast , humorous response when trying to update a seat or a FF number. They respond in minutes without the BS that United gives you. Delta rarely responds at all. Kudos to AA for the X team!
A touching story amidst a horrific backdrop. Good on ya AA. And, a tip of the hat to Ahmed Al Ahmed.
Thank you for posting this story. I only wish I lived near an AA hub instead of United. Kudos to them for going wayyy above and beyond!
Let’s hope this doesn’t lead to an increase in entitlement – there is already enough entitlement in today’s society.
I sure how that they would do something like this for Aunt Sue who is about to miss her cousin Eddie’s funeral in Wichita due to a delay. Hopefully they aren’t picking and choosing in times like this!
Thx Common Sense had I not gone to Dans Deals and read the story there I wouldnt have known how everyone lied to AA and UA. Turns out the texts to AA and UA claimed the passenger was heading to a funeral of a close relative , when in fact the passenger wasnt a relative at all, but was a good friend. Now maybe AA would still have held their plane or maybe not had they known the passenger wasnt a close relative at all. Under these circumstances it would be proper for that person to contact AA and offer to pay for the tkt since it was gotten under false reasons, but I highly doubt that will ever happen
@michelle
I think if you look closer at the details in the story, the full picture is a bit different. While it’s true that one of the initial texts from a third party mentioned a “relative,” the passenger themselves never made that claim.
In fact, all subsequent communication—specifically the direct interaction with the Captain—clearly stated that they were traveling for the funeral of a “good friend.” AA and the crew were aware of the actual relationship when they made the compassionate decision to hold the flight. The airline had the correct information before the plane departed, so it’s unfair to say the passenger lied or obtained the ticket under false pretenses.