The reason I’m writing this instead of winging merrily over the Pacific Ocean, sake in hand, is that American Airlines shafted us. They canceled the local flight because they didn’t have a crew. (Which I’m guessing is airline speak for being chronically understaffed to inflate profits.) And so we missed our international flight.
The woman at the gate of our local airport was rude and unsympathetic, not to mention incompetent:
1) She told us that if the flight is also canceled tomorrow (wtf!) we should just drive to Chicago and board the international flight. First, driving three hours on one of the most epically congested roads in the U.S. and then paying hundreds for two weeks of parking is not a great option. Second, someone later told us that if we don’t check in with AA first, even despite the cancellation, our entire ticket would be voided.
2) She also supposedly reticketed us, but hadn’t actually booked the seats. If I hadn’t called our Japanese travel agent just to keep her in the loop, we would have arrived in Chicago and been marooned there.
So I guess we’re “lucky” we have seats tomorrow. I know airline horror stories are common as spit, and mine is small potatoes compared with many—missed family reunions, funerals, etc. But this still sucks, and the part that sucks worst is that AA won’t be held accountable at all.
When I posted on Facebook, a fair number of people wrote back and said they were former US Airways fliers, but that ever since US Airways merged with AA in 2015 flying has been dreadful.
Meanwhile, here’s AA CEO Doug Parker bragging about how mergers have made the airline industry loss-proof:
Parker spoke on the industry’s recent transformations at American’s annual meeting last week, Skift.com reports, furthering his argument that airline consolidation has made the major names relatively impervious to the slings and arrows of business.
“My personal view is that you won’t see losses in the industry at all,” Parker said. “We have gotten to the point where we, like other businesses, will have good years and bad years, but the bad years will not be cataclysmic. They will just be less good than the good years.”
Unregulated capitalism ftw!
FYI, Parker earned nearly $18 MM in in 2013 and $12 MM in 2014. (Now he’s being paid in stock, so the numbers are less clear.)
Anyhow after spending 45 minutes on the phone—mostly on hold—an AA rep offered me a $300 credit on a future flight. I told him I didn’t want it. What I really want is more regulation. Oh, and to break up the “quadropoly” discussed in the above-linked article. (Four carriers now control 80% of the U.S. market.)
In any case, if my sad tale moves you in any way, kindly refrain from flying American Airlines.