The American Airlines website requires me to enter the country for my Known Traveler Number (Global Entry/PreCheck) in order to sell me a ticket. It doesn’t remember the country (United States!) after I’ve entered it.
The website does not give me a field in which to add this for any passenger besides myself when buying a ticket for my family and entering their AAdvantage number, which pulls up their information. It would be nice, by the way, if they allowed me to save my wife’s and daughter’s information in my profile at all. Instead I have to enter their names and AAdvantage numbers if I want a shortcut.
As a result, every time I click continue I get an error. Then I have to list “United States” for each of them before I can continue.
This is an e-commerce site that can generate over $60 million in sales in a day and they haven’t addressed simple frictions in the buying process like this one.
Of course, American Airlines doesn’t let you confirm upgrades with systemwides or miles on the website, and even though American Airlines earns the bulk of its profit from the AAdvantage program. Their new award calendar often errors out – they got rid of the old one, which was far more functional. And they still don’t make it possible for someone who isn’t yet a member to join the program in the booking path while buying a ticket. This should be an opt-out check box!
Yet the inability to buy a ticket for my family as part of the same reservation, without clicking through to an error screen, has to be my biggest frustration about AA.com. American scolds me in red as though I am doing something wrong and perhaps that (as much as the extra step) is what’s so annoying.
I’m in the healthcare field.. every “upgrade” we get to our medical record system is actually a “downgrade” for us users..usually counterintuitive..It seems it’s the same with travel websites.
This is really nothing to complain about. Moving on…
This consistent American Airlines error also clogs up their reservation phone lines with questions from web users regarding how do I complete my ticket.
Haha I’m glad I’m not alone in this issue. Been booking tickets for Japan next year summer and ever time and ever reservation I have that issue. I’m surprised American hasn’t fix this by now.
Why hasn’t American Airlines hired you as a consultant?
on 9/11 this is a real complaint? #firstworldproblems
Very annoying. Alaska Airlines lets me select who the second passenger is provided I’ve listed this passenger before. It then fills in my wife’s FF number and her KTN number. Why can’t AA do this?
Paul, with you on this one!
RIP dear loved ones.
The AA.com site is a POS. Same situation I face with my family. Also, why don’t I earn anything for all the money I spend on AA for my family?!? Who do you think pays for all those spouse and kid tickets? Add to this that I am CK and I still can’t get a single person from AA to help me when shit goes wrong. They all hand me off. Done with this shitshow.
You people posting are pathetic. I guess Gary should just post on his own blog (which he probably queued up last week) on a day that nobody died…
Don’t complain to us, complain to the company, but be sure they know you run this blog with thousands of readers. Sending a real physical letter as well might get their attention. Unfortunately such things go on too often. Sun Country has an a lousy website that can’t remember trusted traveler numbers. Late stage capitalism, you know…make a profit and ignore the customer.
The really most frustrating flaw in AA system is when searching for scarce premium partner award availability. If nothing is available on the date entered, it is not possible to do a monthly calendar search. It’s necessary to search day by day until SOMETHING is available for a specific date first. Only then can a calendar search be initiated. If I’m missing something, I’d appreciate feedback.
I’ve noticed this (slightly) annoying glitch, too. It seems to have popped up in the last few months (perhaps to accommodate Canadian numbers?). They should fix it. Still, considering they handle almost a million passengers a day, I think AA — and the other major US airlines — do a good job with their websites. Certainly compared to foreign airlines, and the US low fare airlines. And compared to other much smaller consumer businesses. Of the many websites I use to buy stuff, only Amazon does it better.
Agreed! I often book for a family of 6 and entering all of their info each time is such a pain that I’ll book with Delta just to avoid it (Delta lets me just pick from my saved companions). They should be making it much easier to sell tickets.
Completely agree with this. It’s dumb and little, and that’s WHY it’s an annoying friction point. Every extra click and second that AA delays the booking process is an opportunity for someone to abandon the purchase.
There used to be a link on AA.com for when interacting with their customer support where they could see exactly what was being displayed on AA.com through your browser. It was very helpful for when there were pricing and buying errors. I can’t remember what the link was called, it’s gone from their website as far as I can tell now.
Yep. Was just lamenting about this today. it is even worse for companions who have multiple fields that don’t populate.
Amazing UA and AA both made their awards searches worse.
Very glad I’m not alone here. When I click the drop down the only two choices are US and Canada.
Why in the world would the site think that someone who has been an Advantage member since 1988 would suddenly move to Canada?!
@Paul
Isn’t 9/11 a first-world problem?
In your “third-world countries” do they anniversarize buildings that have come down?
Or are you saying more people in the US should be starving and dying so people don’t focus on things like the stupid AA website?
Gary I have the same problem and frustration as you when booking my own tickets – have to put in country – but it does save all the information for my spouse and I don’t have to put in her country or any info- just click her name from the list of frequent travelers that pops up. That’s what I find Crazy!
Seems like I recently ran into this very same issue on Air Canada while booking an award ticket but I could be mistaken.
Anybody notice we cannot see our activity when logging on the website or on the app? There is a workaround, but right now I cannot tell when my miles/points are posting.
The queen just died. How can we be complaining about website and 9 11 some people lost their mommie.
Guess it is all relevant
Totally with you – this is a tiny annoyance, but a persistent one that is SO avoidable.
Countless hours wasted on this error over the years. I dont input companions’ Advantage/TT numbers anymore, have THEM call AA & waste a lot of their own time to get it right. As well as having to input EXACT tkt purchaser’s name in cc field (even if not the cc acct holder!!). As you say, Gary – doesn’t AA’s IT see these issues happening every day with thousands of purchases? Ridiculous
Every time. Same here. It’s an expected hurdle every time I book AA.
I feel led to add also (in event AA is reading) that, while I absolutely appreciate the recent ability to cancel a points tkt & those points reinstated, would it REALLY be so awful to allow us to do in 5 sec on the app instead of requiring us to do over the phone using a live rep with 30+ min in hold/AA call back times? Some reps don’t even have the ability to reinstate, necessitating yet another call/transfer. Again…ridiculous, clumsy, & a beat down for your members. Every “give” comes with a takeaway.
AA website works mostly well (comparatively to similar businesses), except for several glitches that can be fixed easily if they want to fix them.
One large issue I had recently when flying back to US is inability to go straight to counter to check in – agent persisted on me using Kiosk despite being told it doesn’t work for me. Agent needed a printed paper from the kiosk per company’s instruction in order to check me at the counter. I think it mostly because Covid rule that requires contact tracing, but I refused to use a 3rd party service suggested by American and giving them a lot of personal info. It’s not a government website so security is questionable .
AA should make it easier for clients to check in at the counter if they choose to. That’s why they have people working there.
I am so tired of the people that get annoyed at Gary posting ANYTHING on a day that XYZ happened in history. Those types of people are beyond annoying. I guess I should be happy that the comments are not censured.
@Pam. – You can do it online except some of Web Special fares.
As mentioned above, you absolutely can enter family member and other travel companion info in your profile on AA.com and just select who is traveling with you. Super easy. But yes the country thing is idiotic.
Drives me nuts too. Please ignore the haters who would rather post something negative than just skip over.
Another major frustration, my wife and I Never get upgrade offers on the web or mobile site. NEVER.
At won’t point we had the same email address on our accounts, no problem. Then all of a sudden, no confirmation emails for almost a year across a dozen flights. AA tech support was useless (did you check your spam? Over anf over).
Changed one accounts rmaul, they started getting confirmations, but the other didn’t. Had to change them both. My email must be on some blacklist.
Not sure what to do about no upgrade offers. Deleted and reinstalled app, etc. any ideas?
To the haters, why are you posting. Do you think anyone cares you don’t find a particular post interesting? You must be extremely busy commenting on all the stuff on the web you don’t find interesting – is it just to hear yourself talk?
How about just not commenting?
I am not entirely convinced this is an “error” – it is perhaps a security check. Because sometimes I book from my account, and sometimes from SO’s or kid’s accounts, I see different “errors” when logged into different accounts. There is always one per person being booked. For instance, when I’m in my account, SO is always listed as a resident of New Hampshire, a state never resided in. But when in SO’s account, it has the state of residence correct. So the correct information is certainly there. And the “error” is always the same.
I know it’s going to happen, so I always check for it. A little annoying, but perhaps it’s there to make sure you’re really reading all the fields – or that you really are who you claim to be, beyond knowing the possibly hacked password. It’s sort of like that green M&M clause that Van Halen used to put in their contracts, if there were green M&Ms in the bowl, they knew the concert promoter didn’t read the contract, so therefore they should look for other errors in things that could possible affect the safety of the performers. It’s a neat trick people should learn from.
AA’s website an app are really bad. They desperately need some good UX and engineering talent to overhaul them. I am ExPlat and almost always fly AA, but recently have flown United a few times and OH MY GOD their app is light years better in every imaginable way.
One thing that annoys me about AA is that you can’t search flights that have SWU availability unless you actually have an SWU in your account. I want to see which flights might have upgrade availability before I decide if I want to select a systemwide upgrade from my reward choice menu. It would be super easy for them to display SWU upgrade options in the booking path, but someone decided no, we have to hide that unless you actually have an SWU you can use. Seems to make sense on the surface, but clearly nobody really thought it through, especially now that we don’t automatically get SWUs every year and instead have to decide if that’s the reward we want to claim.
@C_M: If I understand you correctly, American Airlines intentionally includes IT errors to help frustrate hackers and passengers to see if they are paying attention. Hopefully, American Airlines will not intentionally under-fuel an aircraft just to see if the pilot was paying attention and discovers a fueling error before running out of jet fuel at 30,000 feet.
@Ken A – Yes, that’s my theory. Not sure it’s a good one, but it’s plausible. Or just sloppy coding.
As for the underfueling an aircraft – no, you shouldn’t do that in real life – lives would be in danger. But as an unexpected event in a simulator, you bet. Pilots need to follow the checklist, and checking the fuel level is something you shouldn’t skip over. Hello, Gimli Glider.