Nearly 40% of the American Airlines schedule was cancelled on Friday. Thirty percent of its schedule was cancelled on Saturday. And that shouldn’t come as any surprise. Texas experienced a severe ice storm, and American Airlines is headquartered at Dallas – Fort Worth airport.
- DFW is said to stand for ‘doesn’t function wet’ – and ice is worse
- This isn’t just the airline’s biggest hub, it’s the nexus of its schedule, odds on a flight that doesn’t touch Texas uses an aircraft, or is staffed by crew, that was supposed to flow through Texas on another flight the same day or the previous day.
I’ve heard from several flight attendants whose flights weren’t just cancelled – but who had to wait hours on hold just to reach crew scheduling to find out what the airline wanted them to do next. And that’s on top of already learning earlier during the pandemic that the airline lacks enough staff to crew its flights when things go wrong. There just aren’t enough extra on reserve. And there are flights out there with 3 flight attendants, waiting on a fourth, delaying 30 minutes at a time for hours.
When a flight cancels in one city, there aren’t extra crew in the next city to take their place. American took more subsidies during the pandemic than any other carrier so they would remain fully staffed and ready to carry passengers when demand returned but did not actually do so.
There’s one way that American has improved. When US Airways management took over American they started splitting up crewmembers throughout the day. American had largely kept planes and crew together, but that practice changed which meant that when a flight delayed it would then delay several additional flights. American has started mostly keeping crew together in Dallas and Charlotte.
American was hardly alone with cancellations over the past several days. Southwest, with its substantial Dallas and Houston hubs (and Texas presence generally) cancelled 12% of its flights on Friday, but mostly recovered on Saturday. JetBlue cancelled over 300 flights, and United almost 150. But American is the largest airline, carrying the most passengers, and seems to have an especially hard time recovering.
Let’s keep bailing them out – at least their ceo is woke and says things that are pleasing to the regime
You’re always looking for ways to bash American.
Parker is leaving things will improve!
@Ed what I have I said that’s either inaccurate or unfair?
I am far from AA’s biggest online fan but you are WAY out of line, Gary.
I was in Dallas when the ice storm hit.
Southworst cancelled their ENTIRE operation the minute the temperature hit degrees F. They had multiple flights sitting at the gate and cancelled them with full gate houses. They simply said “your flight is cancelled, your bags are going to your destination, you can rebook with us here at the gate, at the ticket counter or online.” They operated virtually nothing at Love Field on the first day after the overnight ice storm.
Meanwhile, American at DFW had thinned their schedule but finished the night when the ice arrived by deicing, a procedure that Southwest either doesn’t know how to do or hasn’t bothered to invest in at their hometown airport.
And as WN cancelled flights, Delta operated a 717 (still with the AirTran registration on it) from Love Field gate 15 and left on-time, one of the last flights out of Southwest’s “home” airport.
Ice was thick on the roads and at DFW and is still there today. American reduced their operation and has only managed to operate 25% of their flights but their on-time is not much different from the rest of the industry. They clearly are operating what they are capable of given the icing conditions. I don’t believe any other airline bothered to even operate from DFW on the first day after the icing event. The airport had only one runway open and then expanded to two – and hopefully with thawing today, it will be a normal operation by tomorrow.
Every airline struggles when a multi-day weather event impacts their operation and, of course, they all can improve their systems including crew tracking. But when AA’s crosstown competitor just shuts down in the middle of a well-forecast ice storm and AA’s partner JetBlue consistently takes days to recover from events that don’t involve ice or airfield impediments (AA’s delay rate today is at 18% compared to B6 at 38% at 4.45 Central Time), AA is doing a whole lot better than a whole lot of its peers.
AA can be knocked for a lot of things but they managed to persevere and get through this latest ice storm far better than many of their competitors which means that potshots about this ice event are completely inappropriate
@Tim Dunn – of course this was rough and it was driven by ice, that’s literally in my headline. But whether crew travel together and whether crew can get updated assignments from the airline or have to wait on hold for several hours is on the airline. My point wasn’t about Thursday or Friday operations. It’s about current operations, on the second day where temperatures were above freezing.
Agree with Tim Dunn.
Gary, AA flight attendants can view updates to their schedules online and don’t actually have to wait on hold for crew scheduling. The only people who should call crew scheduling are those who need immediate assistance. I feel like if American was operating a full schedule today you’d accuse them of putting employees at risk due to the icy road conditions in Dallas. When United had so many people call out sick during the holidays, you basically accused AA of spreading covid because the company offered incentives for attendance.
@Ed they should be able to yes but there’s a bunch of meltdowns in this which is what I’m reporting, flight attendants *having to call* and having to *wait hours on hold*.
Ice is all together different from every other type of weather event. When DFW metro roads were emptied and roads were bare, it is a huge kudos to AA that they managed to operate anything.
When the ice is all gone and all runways are open, then there might be a basis for jabbing at AA but that wasn’t the case at the beginning of today and won’t be the case until tomorrow.
you are completely out of line, Gary.
When you start to post incessantly about B6′ incessant piss-poor operation, then we’ll take you seriously about what you say about operations for AA or anyone else.
Yesterday MCO:
14 flights for the city pair MCO/DFW. AA Operates 10 of which they canceled 8, 1 was close to ontime the other 3+ hours delayed. The other 4 flights are operated by NK (3) and F9 (1). All four of those operated, while 3 were ontime and one of the NK flights was about 30 minutes late. Care to guess how many of the stranded AA passengers had WISHED they had been booked on either F9 or NK?…….ALL OF THEM.
Gary, I completely agree. AA never used to take this long to recover, nor have rippling effects, days later, throughout the entire network.
@Tim Dunn, as usual your claims are unsubstantiated and wrong – your account of the runway openings is incorrect, as is the claim no other airline operated the day after the storm. Per the airport’s FB page, all 5 primary runways reopened on Friday. Although often entertaining and humorous, the garbage you make up is really starting to get old.
@Chris – It’s certainly a rare situation for anyone to have “wished” they booked on NK (Spirit) or F9 (Frontier) over AA and WN (Southwest). Climate change does some weird things….
OK ice. Does ice prevent online rebooking? In AA case it does. Does ice affect flight status on AA.com. It certainly does. Does AA have a robust disaster plan for major weather events: hot or cold? Not an effective one. Even customers that try and anticipate rebooking are foiled by AA. Last week JFK outbound cancelled. AA rebooking wouldn’t allow display & booking of LGA flights. So naturally I had to get on a phone wait list. 2 transcons cancelled today. Now on United. Their aircraft and crews are in place to cover AA.
AA UK telephone support did the job. Maybe AA should remote support IT staff (either US or overseas) if staff can’t make it into DFW. Parker’s good at dressing up. Next time Isom goes to Washington looking for money Parker should don appropriate costumes.
@Chris Topher – All DFW runways finally being reopened by late Friday doesn’t do much to solve the issue quickly when aircraft and crews are out of place and scattered across the country. It’s naturally easier for other carriers to restore flying to DFW since it’s simply a spoke city. @Tim Dunn is spot on.
@Ed – That’s wasn’t my point. My point was that Dunn’s account of the runways reopening was completely wrong.
The bottom line is that AA & SW are still suffering staffing shortages and it is greatly affecting irrop recovery.
Topher
you are clearly new at English.
I said “When the ice is all gone and all runways are open” – which requires that BOTH be satisified.
The ramps at DFW STILL have ice on them. The ramps that AA operates from.
And feel free to post the number of flights that were operated by every other airline except for American or its regional partners on Thursday which was the day after the ice storm which came Wednesday night.
We’ll wait including while you work on English comprehension and find the number of non-AA flights that operated on Thursday, not Friday.
again, I am hardly an AA fanboy but I do know what went on in Dallas and have pictures to prove it. I doubt you or your keyboard warrior friend in Austin have a clue what was going on in Dallas.
When Gary or you can show ANY airline that managed to operate even 200 flights/day out of airport that was ice covered, you’ll have credibility.
When you and Gary admit that B6′ IROP recovery – which is what Gary addresses – is by far the worst in the industry and can easily be backed up w/ statistics including from flight tracking sites, then you’ll both have credibility to comment about AA.
btw, I was in Atlanta when they were hit by a snowstorm several years ago and the scene and airline operations was similar.
American simply did not do any worse than any other airline in similar situations and if they did, Gary should be able to prove it with data.
@Tim
Yo vivo en dallas. So sorry I missed you. Let’s get a drink next time!
@Tim even though you “were in Dallas,” the storm hit on Thursday. I’d refer you to the weather channel, but we all know you’re not familiar with how to cite sources.
@ Chris Topher. You’re spot on buddy! This Tim Dunn prick has gotten me all fed up with his BS about statistics and info on different subjects. They’re all just made up, typical Trump supporter idiot who thinks that by citing unnamed sources over and over again they all become true. Post them all online, do a citation! Post a link even, otherwise remove all this fake garbage!
@Tim Dunn – “When you start to post incessantly about B6′ incessant piss-poor operation” I noted their cancels in the post, but really, who cares about B6 other than Chuck Schumer and the DOJ?
If you want to appeal to a national audience, Gary, then B6′ ongoing and weekly operational disasters are as notable as what happens to AA at DFW.
If you want to just rag on AA because you are supposedly loyal to them but apparently hate every minute of it based on what you write on this site, then your local bias explains everything.
again, I’m not fanboy for AA but when there are multiple data sources that you should be able to cite to compare AA’s operations to other carriers, you are simply writing an opinion column that is actually DEVOID of data – and your readers should know that.
and based on the DOT complaint ratio for JetBlue, a whole lot of customers care and should be advised of how badly they run their operation BEFORE they buy tickets.
And for those that want to argue when this event happened, the temperature at DFW dropped below freezing at 6.55 pm on Wednesday Feb 2 with 1/4 inch of rain which means it was freezing rain from that point forward. Given that WN cancelled their entire operation at 7 pm, they knew when it happened too. And precipitation stopped at 12 noon on Feb 3, 17 hours later, after more than 2 1/2 inches of frozen precipitation – pretty much in line w/ what was forecast. The temperature didn’t get above freezing until 1 pm yesterday and then for only 5 hours, only to return above freezing at 9.30 this morning.
In the age of the internet, it isn’t that hard to find historical weather.
For a site that pontificates about politics, covid and the invasion of sovereign nations, a little class in meteorology might be in order.
Gravely point,
I name my sources. You simply pretend they don’t exist so call it faux news.
Try the DOT’s air travel consumer report, weather underground or other sources for data relevant to this article.
Oh my, quite the kerfuffle here.
Thanks for the entertainment!
AA has a tendency to cancel flights when loads get lower than desired. This is especially true in winter when loads in some city pairs drops. This past week was a case where this practice caught them with too few commuters able to get to work and too many blown sequences. On Tuesday they began proactively cancelling the late afternoon and evening flights to cities (MCI, STL, OKC, etc) expecting winter weather. This left the morning return bank on Wednesday cancelled when it could have easily gone. As I said, when expecting lower loads on Tuesday/Wednesday/Saturday AA normally is much too quick to cancel and consolidate. With no significant inclement weather expected it’s only a bother as most commuters can jumpseat when the remaining planes fill up, but when entire flights are cancelled then everybody gets stuck.
Another hotel night at DFW. Cust serv lines 4hr long. No reason to believe any flights will really leave as you are rescheduled. Clusters of AA employees voicing their incredulous of what’s going on here.
Willy,
again, I am no defender of AA but your statements are simply without data to support your statement.
The ice storm was ALREADY in MCI, STL, and Oklahoma a day before it hit DFW. OF COURSE they are cancelling flights – not because they are light but because NOT A SINGLE AIRLINE can operate their normal schedule when they have to deice and/or when runways and/or taxiways are not fully functional.
AA has had several weeks of system operations that are as good or better than any other airline – but they aren’t immune from weather any more than JetBlue is or Delta, the industry gold standard for operations.
The issue is how quickly operations return to normal – and they cannot return to normal when there is still ice on ramps and taxiways which was the case for much of the day at DFW.
AA has not precancelled any flights for tomorrow – the first day they have not done so this week.
Get back w/ us this time tomorrow and let us know how AA has done for Sunday operations. I’ll bet you dinner at your favorite Tex-Mex in Dallas that JetBlows will have worse on-time than AA.
correction: AA has pre-cancelled 5% of its operations for Sunday. Flightaware has already flipped to Sunday
and JetBlue is the only US airline that already has late flights for Sunday.
LOL at arguing with DL fanboy Tim Dunn aka World Traveler who was kicked off A.net and is laughed at on every aviation board he posts.
I’ll also add that your US Airways crew scheduling claim is incorrect. US is the one that kept crews and planes together (it was actually in their FA contract) while is American is the one split crews up. This is the third or fourth time you have stated this incorrectly.
Gary Leff,
With all due respect, your whole blog is inaccurately spun and patently unfair. Your apparent bias and hate toward American Airlines affect your objectivity. And your blog consistently reads as if you have some kind of personal vendetta against the airline.
In this particular piece, you write as if you think American should have fully overcome the effects of this ice storm in fewer than 20 minutes. I lived through a debilitating ice storm in Chicago before I moved to Phoenix. And I can tell you from my own personal experience that it took O’Hare well over a week to even begin to recover from the damage that storm caused. My father drove home from Wisconsin to help us use our furnace without the electric blower and pilot (he was in the propane gas business) and crashed his car gently into our garage because he couldn’t stop soon enough on the ice in the driveway. My brother ice skated on our lawn the day after the initial freezing occurred. There were downed power lines all over the area that took days to get temporarily fixed, even with Commonwealth Edison crews working around the clock. I have a friend who’s a flight attendant for American, and she’s stuck in DFW. And according to her Facebook page, it’s not the airline’s fault. But you want to make the ice storm 100% the airline’s fault. Ice storms can create a lot of damage that isn’t always readily apparent. I lived through one. I know what they can do.
I read your blog because it sometimes has some interesting “leaked” insights, but your bias and hate are palpable, and it damages your credibility, at least to me. The bottom line is that it’s pretty sad when people sound like they actively root for bad things to happen to decent people (especially if those people make happen to make good incomes) and hope that companies they apparently hate have to be liquidated.
I’m no air industry/operations expert like many on here, just a frequent flyer. But from a customer perspective, I don’t see any other description for this weekend other than “meltdown”.
1. Call AA reservations 9am Saturday morning.
2. Told callback will be “more than 4 hours from now”.
3. Actual callback 8:30 pm — nearly 12 hours later.
4. On callback at 8:30 pm, PUT ON HOLD! This has never ever happened before. After 15 minutes, hung up.
I’m no AA basher. But if the flights go off the board AND customers can’t call for help, that is a meltdown.
Gary – Given B6 is the backbone of American’s NYC strategy, you should care about B6 quite a bit
I love Delta,
and yet multiple people, including Ghost, with whom I often disagree, has a more level-headed approach to what to expect in an ice storm, not afternoon thunderstorms than just about anyone else that tried to argue w/ me.
Who cares what happens on other sites other than those that don’t want to know the truth? I am one of the very few people that use my real name and do so across multiple sites. If you love Delta you clearly aren’t honest enough about what you write to let them know who you really are.
Of course call hold times and crew tracking is screwed up when an airline – any airline – cancels 1/3 of their operation day after day because of weather. Let me know of an airline – any airline that doesn’t have those problems.
The issue is what to expect when ice, not snow and not thunderstorms, disrupt an operation. When the ice is off of the ramp and taxiways -not just runways, then if AA can’t get its operation back to normal, that is on them. Let’s revisit at the end of the day.
and let’s also note that Gary apparently loves to create argumentative situations including by posting an article also yesterday naming one of his blog arch-competitors – who incidentally usually gets far more responses to controversial articles. Gary should not be surprised if he gets challenged on what he posts just as he apparently likes to do with other people – and neither should his readers who enter the argument expect any different.
I am typing this whilst sitting on the floor of the Chicago ohare airport. I was due to be in Cancun Friday. Due to flight cancellations and delays, my vacation has been effectively cancelled. Expedia is working to get me a refund from the resort. As I sit here is the Windy City, American Airlines is scrambling to find flight attendants for my (yet another) delayed flight back to Philly. I have had no less than 4 cancelled flights in the past 24 hrs and a delayed flight caused a missed connection. If only the airline seemed to care one bit for the client. I had actually boarded one plane last night only to be deplaned for lack of a pilot. Something tells me I will not see the hundreds of dollars I’ve spent preselecting my seats.
You Keyboard Cowboys crack me up !! You know nothing !!! @ DesertGhost Gary has it out for AA because he got caught trying to steal from the AAdvantage program thats all……..
AA under Doug Parker has truly become a Garbage Carrier……more excuses for more “F Ups” than most can keep track of. They may be the Largest Carrier in the World but they should also claim the title of being The Worst. Their own Employees call it a Shitshow openly because many of them have been left stranded (cancelled flights, no hotel rooms, no one to answer their questions) and that is all the public needs to know about their operation. Unreliable due to gross incompetence.
It never ceases to amaze me how these sites never seem to have anything positive to say any travel experience. Obviously never been in the shoes of travel/Hospitality workers or business owners. The comment always seems to be …”they SHOULD have know/done/looked in their crystal ball, etc” and been on top of every weather, pandemic, revolution, and/or act of God. Matters not the circumstances or nuances of the situation. For *F* sakes people, everyone’s doing their best, and travel will not be perfect for a while to come!
Marc is 100% correct. And while I understand your point @Tim Dunn, the title of the article speaks the truth. One can excuse the problems due to ice. The “recovery” just shows the incompetence of AA management. We experienced this first hand this weekend.
There are no excuses for:
1. Ridiculously long wait times via phone, twitter, or chat.
2. AA customer service staff not being empowered to actually help customers once you are able to speak with them.
3. Poorly managed, understaffed AA staff at the airports who create additional bottlenecks.
Make no mistake, this is a management problem. Every company faces challenges, but companies with good leadership find ways to overcome them. American Airlines would be well-served to learn from companies such as Disney when it comes to customer service and Amazon when it comes to logistical operations.
I’ve been flying AA for 30 years, but after this weekend, I’m ready to give United and Delta a try. United eventually got me home last night with zero issues.
Andrew,
I appreciate the civil response.
My point was that AA wasn’t in a position to start recovering until the ice was gone – which it is today. Southwest has cancelled just 7 flights across its system as of today and not a single cancelled flight at Love Field so weather or ice shouldn’t be an issue any more.
AA started today – or last night – with 5% system cancellations and they are up to 19% so they are clearly not getting things back to normal yet. Nearly all of AA’s hubs are in the top 10 US cities for delays but few other non-AA hubs.
When crews are out of place and the airline can’t get them where they need to be, delays and cancellations occur – that has been true throughout this event for AA. Weather was compounded by staffing and crew tracking issues. It is one thing when employees can’t get to the airport but it is another thing when crews are at the airport due to cancelled flights and they aren’t rerouted in a timely manner.
Customer service handling suffers during IROPs. that is true for every airline. Part of the reason why Delta does better on customer service metrics as measured by the DOT is because they run a more reliable operation.
Robert Isom, AA’s incoming CEO, recognizes the cost of running a bad operation and the customer service problems that come with it. I have more confidence in the ability of Isom to fix problems than I did about Parker.
And airlines that aren’t based in the city being affected by the IROP have an advantage – their crews and planes generally come into DFW, in this case, and then leave right back out. That has been true for Delta, United and Spirit throughout this.
it was also true when Houston was flooded and United was impacted.
American should learn and improve from this. Delta recovers from IROPs far faster than other airlines – as is seen in their performance over the past couple of days after the same storm went through the NE – not just compared to B6 but also compared to AA and UA.
Glad you are home. Texas is a nice place to visit – nice people – but the weather extremes esp. in N. Texas make it a place I never want to live in.
It’s Ridiculous!! AA JUST CANCELED FOR THE SECOND TIME, flight from Mexico City medical specialist won’t reschedule you as easy… now what is the justification?
As someone who was trying to leave Tulsa to get to Alabama on Wednesday, I’d like to share my AA experience last week. Tuesday night at 10 PM, I receive an email that my flight is cancelled so attempt to rebook online for Thursday morning. Website is struggling to work (on both phone and laptop) so I attempt to call customer service and the wait time is 3 hours 15 minutes – 5 hours. I use the “Hold my place and call me when you’re ready” option and then get woken up at 3 AM only to be placed on hold again without speaking to anyone until an additional hour has gone by (4 AM at this point). Finally get rebooked on a Thursday morning flight but that flight is then delayed multiple times. Flights are being cancelled all over the airport due to the storm but I do get to watch forlornly as a Delta flight takes off. Finally get rebooked on one of 2 flights that were not cancelled yet – to Chicago this time. Multiple additional delays later, we do make it to Chicago where I missed my connection and then got the treat of sleeping on the floor in O’Hare since AA would not provide accommodations because the weather is not their fault. Why sleep on the floor? Because the next flight wasn’t until 5 AM the next morning and TSA wasn’t opening until 3 AM with several airport employees warning me it would be difficult to get through in time because that time is a madhouse. Around 4 AM (once everyone was at the gate), that flight was then cancelled. Cue being bounced back and forth between gates, told to call for rebooking because the website is down, finding out the wait time for phone calls is now between 9-12 hours, and exactly ZERO american airlines staff at any of the counters despite searching across the entire terminal. I was finally able to rebook via the direct-line phones in the “self-help” area and was again rerouted, now going to DC (Reagan). After MANY delays once again, I am finally on the way to DC. It is Friday afternoon when we get there and then we have multiple delays once again due to [in order] (1) timed out flight crew, (2) delayed replacement flight crew, (3) broken radio discovered AFTER we had all boarded and waited in our seats at the gate for 40 minutes, and finally (4) a broken lavatory which none of us passengers by that point cared about in the slightest and would have gladly held it the entire flight if it just meant simply getting off the ground. While AA had to deal with the ice just like everybody else, it was incredibly frustrating and painful to watch the other airlines assisting their passengers, actually taking off, and offering comforts when their passengers had to deal with extensive delays. The long and short of it is that AA does not have the staff (flight crews, airport staff, OR customer service) to handle even a portion of their passengers. I’ve been flying for over 28 years (with AA many times) but honestly, after this utter cluster of a week, I will not be booking on AA again unless something major changes with their staffing and handling of passengers.
Someone must be paying you to bash AA. Every wors that comes out of your mouth is bashing yet you still fly them and still want something for free.
Sometimes your words arw disgusting. It was a snow storm in a city that doesn’t handle snow well. It’s not nyc.find a better Job than go about bashing airlines. People who complain about flight cancelation during bad weather are idiots.
On Feb 4th, I had had cancelled flghts to Miami and then to Brazil.
Many flights were cancelled at that day in MCO. Just one employee at American counter. I reserved one hotel by my own near the airport. And I decided to solve the situation on the next day.
On Feb 5th, the same happened. Flight cancelled. At this time AA agent at MCO, named Jessica, managed the situation quite well. She gave me some options. So, I had chosen head JFK on Jetblue. And the São Paulo, Brasil on Feb, 6th.
Unfortunately, the Feb 6th flight to GRU (São Paulo) was delayed until next morning. They reserved us a hotel close to JFK. On the next day, feb 7, we took off to GRU. The flight was great. The crew was excellent.
That was my poor experience at AA.
@Joaquim
You’re lucky that you didn’t run across Vina Joseph….she works at the MCO counter in the mornings. She is ABSOLUTELY the worst AA employee there is. Even I’m surprised that I’m not awarding that distinction to a flight attendant.