American Airlines is testing a customer-friendly move to hold connecting flights for delayed passengers, when doing so won’t cause problems for the operation. This effort is underway as of today at Dallas – Fort Worth airport, and if all goes well it’ll be expanded.
American Airlines, Dallas – Fort Worth
Here’s what’s been shared internally with employees:
United Airlines runs something called ConnectionSaver that has been unique. They will delay flights for passengers to help them make connections. But they don’t do it all the time. Their computers take several things into account.
- Many flights are projected to arrive early. They’ll delay a flight where doing so means the flight will arrive on-time rather than early.
- Delaying the last flight of the day is more common, because the consequences of missed connections are greater (forced overnight) and because delaying the plane and other passengers has fewer consequences (they won’t be connecting and the plane may just be overnighting). A long delay could require crew to start late the next day to get minimum rest, but a short delay usually won’t have much effect.
American Airlines gate agents can’t hold a flight for connecting passengers. The airline only lets them hold the door instead of closing it 10 minutes before departure when a customer is running up to the gate and in the agent’s direct line of site, or for the last flight of the day they’ve been allowed to wait until 5 minutes to departure for doors close.
Dallas – Fort Worth Gate A16
And agents don’t have to do this. In fact, they may be concerned about getting in trouble if they do because the airline has prioritized exact on-time departures (D0) even when they aren’t needed over over getting those last passengers on board.
In fact American will remove passengers from flights before they even miss them, simply because American’s computers project that they will miss the flight. This lets them give the seat to another passenger that wants to get on – and do it earlier, when it won’t delay the crucial last minutes prior to departure (they call this system ‘AURA’ or the AUtomated ReAccommodation Tool).
American Airlines
Generally speaking an airline is more likely to hold your flight if,
- a lot of customers are trying to make the connection
- there aren’t other options for getting this group to their destination
- delaying the flight will have only a limited effect on the operation – further delays, crew timing out, other passengers misconnecting later
Even still, United’s ConnectionSaver has held planes for over 2,000 passengers in a day. It’ll be fascinating to watch American tune their new system and see how many connections they’re able to save for customers.
American Airlines DFW Airport Gate D21
It does seem like American has started to make some effort paying more attention to customers and fixing pain points. They just announced that premium cabin customers will no longer have their headphones collected an hour before landing and that wifi will be free on most of their planes starting next year.
We’re only weeks away from the inaugural of their new business class and opening of their new style business class lounge in Philadelphia. They have a long way to go with inflight food and beverage, but it’s really good to see some green shoots at the airline.
I mean I give credit where credit is due — they’re using technology to help the customers here instead of only their bottom line.
Sure would have been nice of them to do that instead of giving our seats away with 15 min to go, stranding us for almost 9 hours until the next flight without so much as a “sorry”.
If they are indeed serious, it’s about darned time
I fly Mexico City to St. Louis (connection in DFW) 2-3 times every year. I intentionally look for an itinerary with a little longer spacing between flights, being aware of AA’s love of algorithms and their poor on time record.
AA routinely (and arbitrarily) changes my itinerary to the narrowest connection between the two flights…then, of course..wonder if wonders is late on the 1st flight.
Even when I run through the airport and arrive in time for the connection, I am not guaranteed to board. They have caused me to miss multiple connections in the past several years.
Honestly, this is a breach of contract…of their own doing.
Can only hope they are sincere about this new program.
The issue are the 45-60 minute connections. Even landing on time doesn’t mean an on time arrival-when the door opens. Airport congestion, blocked alley ways, a tardy flight still on the gate, the lack of a marshaling crew can mean a flight that might get in 5-10 minutes early is now 5-10 minutes late. By the time the passenger gets off the plane (particularly if they’re in the back of coach) boarding is finishing on their connecting flight. Maybe the passenger hustles to the gate. But often it’s a stop at the bathroom, get food or just mosey along to the connecting gate. Unless it’s the last flight of the night that plane will have a quick turn back to a hub. So then those passengers face the same issue. At some point the GA needs to cut bait and get the flight closed up.
AA will often have a cheaper fare with a near MCT with a warning and people go with the cheaper option. Infrequent flyer think 40-45 minutes is all the time in the world.
Seems like AA is implementing two competing systems. Which one will have priority, the one that tries to hold the plane or AURA? And I second the question asked about gate agents needing to meet D0. How many will actually hold the door vs closing at D15 and denying boarding to the runners?
Did AA say if there will be notifications sent to travelers in their app if the door is being held open longer than D15? After my CLT experience where my inbound landed early but then we sat on the taxiway for nearly 30 min after schedule arrival which made us officially delayed, I’d like to know if I should run or not to the next gate.
@heertz
AA is also thinking about the bottom line when they spend on hotel and meals for misconnects on basic economy tickets.
@hwertz
This is exclusively about the bottom line as AA risks further possible $$ in accomodatig misconns.
It happens to be a win/win for AA & pax, but the benefit to the pax is only collateral, not out of any
customer service empathy.
Wonder what the CLT ‘gridlock’ would look like with that new software in action !
So American is doing what they used to do and what every other airline does that uses connecting flights? Except for the use of computers this is a decades old practice. I’m glad they’re reverting to a previous successful practice.
I’m actually against this practice. I understand that it provides good customer service for those who are delayed, but at the same time it inconveniences the majority of the passengers on the plane. I don’t know why you would inconvenience 125 people to pacify 15. It just makes no sense to me.
“AA routinely (and arbitrarily) changes my itinerary to the narrowest connection between the two flights…” I had an international connection last year on AA in DFW that, according to their system, could be made if I took the last flight of the day to DFW. I purposely booked a flight that gave me a long layover. They cancelled that flight (many months in advance) and rebooked me on that last flight with a 55 min. connection. It “only” took a phone call to get on a flight that gave me the cushion I wanted. I flew AA many times to Australia before COVID, always booked quite early, and always had to call them to fix these kind of things.
There was a good aspect of this. I could book the cheaper fare with a lousier routing early, they’d modify the schedule, and I’d call and get the originally more expensive routing I wanted all along. I always seemed to win in these “involuntary rebooking” cases. But, maybe my memory has shortened phone wait times.
But what about their lauded, proprietary “Connection Buster™” software?
@tonya. This system seems like it will only hold a flight if the flight was expected to arrive early and that shorter flight time can be utilized to hold the flight, get more people on and everyone still arrives on time. I’m curious if it will be aware of crew duty times and airport curfews?
@Tonya – Airlines always pad their schedule for potential delays and so they can look like they’re arriving early most of the time. Mostly it’s some of that padding that will be used as making 125 people late or missing a connection for 15 would be a recipe for disaster. On the other hand if holding a flight for 10 minutes can lead to nobody missing a connection then it seems like a benefit for the flying public.
@Mitch – Whatever program or algorithm AA is using would have to build in such factors or it would require enough human oversight to make the automation nearly worthless.
If that’s actually what they’re doing, then that’s awesome. It’s a real shame to miss a flight, especially if your delay is caused by the airline. I like this use of ‘technology.’
I’m with @Easy Victor, ‘sorry’ isn’t enough sometimes. I’ll continue to advocate for an EU261-style law for the USA, where airlines compensate us if they cause a significant delay (like hours long).
@Tonya D Powell — @Christian is correct. It depends; holding an extra 5-15 minutes is one thing; holding an hour, is absurd. It’s all about doing things within-reason here.