With the exception of flying American Airlines directly to Texas (I'd rather fly Continental anyway), I don't think I will ever fly with them again. Our visit to Missouri last week was marred with delays, incompetence, lame excuses, and bad equipment. Here's what happened.
Tuesday 7/3/07 7:58am Todd and I left home for the airport. We had a 9:30am flight from Seattle to DFW, and then a 3:50pm connection to Springfield. It would get us there in time for dinner and some preliminary fireworks. Our flight from Seattle to Springfield was fine, except for being seated at the very last row next to the lavatories (with seats that didn't recline because of the wall).
When we arrived in Dallas, found out the plan was 20 minutes delayed. We watched the horizon as big bruised storm clouds moved toward the airport. After 20 minutes, we still weren't boarding and the storm was pushing closer. Mind you, this is the same weather system that's had Texas in its grips for the last 6 weeks. Dallas looked like the Lake District. More time passed and the storm hit hard. The flight was cancelled. Rather than stand in line watching other flights board, I called AA (800-433-7300, a number I have now memorized) and was informed the rest of the flights for the night were full with long standby lists and we would have to go in the morning. The agent offered to put us on the standby list for the flight leaving at 6:30pm that night, getting into Springfield at 1pm the next day. When I asked how that was possible (it's a 55 minute flight to Springfield from DFW), she informed me it was a direct flight connecting through Chicago (direct does not = nonstop, you see. Just means you don't have to change planes).
We passed, and I called my dear friend Jessica who graciously took the imposition and put us up for the night (thanks, Jess! It was great meeting Jay too!). We were confirmed for seats on the 9:30am flight on 7/4/07 to Springfield. I checked with the Baggage Service Office to see if they could retrieve our luggage and they couldn't tell us where it was, but in 2 hours they might have an answer. Because Jessica couldn't get us for a few hours anyway, we went to dinner and sat around the airport - no luggage to be seen. In fact, we had heard different things from everyone. BSO told us the luggage was still in Dallas, but they didn't know where. The ticket guy said it was probably on its way. The gate agent said it left on the 630pm flight (which actually never left because they didn't have a crew to fly it, turned out). So we stopped at Walgreen's on the way home to get the essentials, minus clean clothes.
When we woke the next morning and checked the weather and flights, everything was a go. We got to the airport, but when we checked in they told us they'd cancelled the flight to Springfield for weather reasons. It was beautiful outside, but you know that doesn't mean anything. It's the loophole through which all excuses can be filed so they are not liable for anything. Weather = crew displacement = can't fly, so it can impact anything in the system and because it's a technical act of GAWD, they can't be held responsible for the fuck ups in the system. I know this, I used to have to deal with this all the time. He put us on the standby list for the 11:30am flight, but we were confirmed on a 2:30pm flight just in case.
As many of you know, standby flying can be great and it can suck. Especially when the airline decides to publish and regularly update the order of passengers on the standby list. When we got on the list, we were #s 10 & 11. By the time we reached the gate, we had fallen to 14 & 15. Before the flight took off, we had fallen further down on the list. American justifies this by saying that 'there are a number of things that impact your placement on the standby list, including AA Advantage status, disruption of schedule, etc.' This means musical chairs anxiety for everyone, and the families with 4 & 5 people (usually mostly children) are screwed every time.
Of course we didn't get on the flight. What were you thinking?
We did get on the 2:30pm flight. Well, when it became the 3pm and then 3:30pm and finally the 4:15pm flight. We arrived in Springfield nearly 32 hours after leaving home, and of course our luggage had been sitting there the whole time.
Our visit shortened, we made the best of it and turned around to leave on Saturday, 7/7/07 on a 6:30pm flight. The weather was good in Dallas and in Springfield and we felt good. I called at 2:30pm to confirm the flight was still on time (we had an 8:50 connection to Seattle), and the agent told me we didn't have a reservation. Apparently, we had never shown up to fly earlier that week, so they cancelled our itinerary. As you can imagine, I was furious. I explained that the flight was cancelled and we had graciously waited in the airport for 5 hours waiting for AA to get its shit together, and by no means had we mysteriously not shown up for the flight. The agent explained that when the flight was cancelled, they should have made adjustments to our initerary, but instead they merely cancelled it completely. She would do what she could to get us on a flight that night.
But it was 7/7/07, and we were lucky - there were a couple of seats on both the Springfield/DFW flight and DFW/Seattle flight. Be at the airport at the time you'd originally scheduled for the 6:30pm flight. Perfect. Well, maybe not. Because when we got there, we discovered the flight was delayed, now departing at 7:17pm. This was because of mechanical problems in Dallas and they had to swap out a plane and reboard all of the passengers and luggage. If the plane took off from Springfield at 7:17 and the flight was about an hour, we would have 10 lucky minutes to get to our flight to Seattle, the last of the night. I called to check the gate situation. We'd be going from terminal B to terminal C, and we'd have to take the Skylink, which came every 2 - 3 minutes. I made the call and we were going to try it - but just in case, they put us on the first flight out Sunday (7/8/07) to Seattle in case we missed our connection. As we waited for the plane to arrive, we saw the arrival time slip another 10 minutes and knew we just lost the only 10 minutes we had. We called Todd's parents to come get us. We sat at the soon-closing ticket counter (it closes at 7pm in Springfield, along with Security) and waited for our baggage and for rebooking the next day. Pam got us our luggage and put us on an 8:50am flight to Dallas, with an 11:45am departure to Seattle.
The next morning, we made the flight to Dallas, finally. We ate in the airport and got to the plane just in time - and got on board. So far, so good. Then it started raining and DFW closed the ramp, meaning that ramp folks couldn't service planes, either baggage, or pulling the planes with tugs, nothing. Lightening strikes were too frequent at that point and it was too dangerous. We sat on the plane at the gate for 45 minutes before we finally pushed back. And because the little things matter - note that I was in a middle seat that didn't recline and only played one channel of music (bad hip hop) and not the sound for the movie that I didn't give a damn about watching anyway.
Never again, American Airlines. And I'm pulling an Ana and I'm writing you a letter.
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