American Airlines

On Wednesday, Nov 27, I booked a flight from Atlanta to College Station on American Airlines. The record locator was SLEWCL. The first leg of the trip was flight 242 from Atlanta to Dallas. That flight was uneventful. Pleasant, even. The second leg was flight 3502 from Dallas to College Station. The AA iOS app said that this flight was to depart from gate E29A at 8:26PM (screenshot below). As my 3 week old grandson had been rushed to a hospital in Texas, I was engrossed texting various family members when I noticed that boarding should have started. I was informed that the departure gate was B3. I had fifteen minutes to get from the farthest E gate to the farthest B gate. I had to run through the airport to make it with a minute to spare. On the one hand, I just signed up for Medicare so I'm too old for this. On the other hand, I did manage to outrun the young Asian lady who was in the same predicament as I.

Today I contacted AA customer relations (AA Ref#1-28844590539). The gist of their response:

That is why we ask our customers to please check the Flight Information Display monitors.

Blithering idiots. First, I was sitting at a gate where if there were any information display monitors, they weren't readily visible. Second, the system that posts updates to the information display monitors should also update the information in the mobile app.

To add insult to injury, the customer service rep (who I don't fault -- they're powerless to do anything but use a script) wrote:

I have made your comments available to the appropriate management personnel for internal review and to serve as a focus of discussion on how to better serve our customers in the future.

Is AA management so out of touch that they don't already know that their IT system needs work? Do they not "eat their own dog food"?

Hey, American! I flew United back (their prices were cheaper that day). United had updates in their app in a timely manner.

AA.GateAA.Gate.Actual
blog comments powered by Disqus