American Airlines Rant

The Coffee Shop
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Long winded rant ahead.

My wife and I flew to Cabo for some RR and a belated 10th anniversary vacation. We live near a delta terminal, but couldn’t get any of their flights to align with our schedule, so it was on to AA the finest budget airline.

Departure flight - early departure at 6:30am, paid for a first class upgrade for the first leg from MSP to DFW. Boarded plane, got a drink, then notified there was a frozen water line and no water in the lavs. Spent an hour trying to get it fixed, no dice. Deplaned, luckily, first class front row had us to the gate agent ASAP. Got us on the next flight, which was boarding in the next gate over. Lost the 1st class upgrade, but making headway. Delay caused us to miss our original flight to SJD, put on standby for the only other flight that day to SJD. Land in DFW, had boarding passes for the flight to SJD. We only really lost a couple hours in Cabo, but the maintenance issue annoys me. Ground crew didn’t close a valve, which resulted in the frozen line.

Return (the gong show) - SJD to DFW, straight forward flight of 2:15, until storms blew up at DFW. Went into a holding pattern for 45 minutes, needed fuel landed at SAT. We were flight #9 to land there, 2 hours on the tarmac, wait in queue to get ATC clearance, finally landed at DFW around 9:30pm.

While on the tarmac at SAT got notice our outbound flight was cancelled, managed to get a room at the DFW Hyatt Regency at list price. Dude in line behind us got the second to last room and paid 2x what we did. Photo of the check in line below… I get the weather issue, part of travel, just the way it is.

Booked on the next flight to MSP Tuesday AM, departure 7am. before finally going to bed, get notice flight is delayed until 8:45…

Tuesday AM, get on plane, fully board plane, “we have a hydraulic leak, need an hour to fix.” Had an exit seat looking at the engine with a leak. Spent an hour, hear them load test the hydraulics, spin it all back down, 5 minutes later, cowling on the engine is still up. Look at my wife and say, “they just load tested and the cowling is up, we are getting on another plane.” Sure enough, “we are going to deplane and bring another jet into a gate for this flight.”

Sat around for a little over an hour, here comes the next plane, load up, 2 hour flight to MSP with some bumpy air, but we made it home 14 hours later than expected.

Now for my rant… weather is uncontrollable, but how the hell did we end up with 2 planes with maintenance issues out of the 4 we should have been on. We boarded 6 planes for 4 legs!

Lastly, Cabo weather is nice, Cabo is expensive and all inclusives are not my thing. Want to go back next year and do some fishing, any recommendations for accommodations that aren’t all inclusive?

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Note to self – avoid flights that you’re also booked on.

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The best advertising Delta could do is buy people flights on American… “See how shit these guys are?”

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That is a long line. My wife refuses to go on any trip that is not a direct flight due to plane change issues during our previous travels. Nothing worse than delays when you have connecting flights to make.

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Hold my beer.
Every trip recently on AA has resulted in a delay and or a missed connection. However, our flight back from Nice, France this summer takes the cake. I started to feel a little off in my stomach the night before we were scheduled to leave. Got to the airport early the next day as we didn’t know what customs would be like leaving. Stood in a cattle call line for over an hour which delayed the flight. Got on the plane and we pulled away from the gate only to be told that we needed to pull to the side as a crew member was about to time out on the flight. Sat in the plane on the tarmac for over 2 hours as they brought in a new crew member. In the meantime, they made the announcement we would be taking off, but that they were making a decision regarding if we would need to land again in Paris or if we would head to Boston as several other crew members were now in danger of timing out. All this time I holding out on going to the backroom as I know the consequences will be dire for anyone using the lavatory after me. I sleep off and on with the cold sweats as it is decided we will fly to Boston and then get a new crew to get us to Philadephia. We make it to Boston where they announce we will not deplane but rather the new crew will be brought out to the plane. New crew arrives and we take off to Philadephia where we land at a little after 1 in the morning. Obviously we have missed our flight to DFW, so we get in a line(fortunately we are towards the front of the line so we get rebooked for 6 am flight from Philadephia to Washington instead of DFW. Line takes almost an hour to get through. Once we have secured a hotel and our flight for the next day I abandon my wife and rush off to the restroom. As God is my witness I heard sounds coming from my stall I have never in my time on earth ever heard before. Get to the hotel at 2:30 with a wake up call for 4:30. Finally make it back to Wichita over a day later than our scheduled arrival. Feeling sick I don’t go into work on Friday as I would have spent more time in the bathroom than my office. Sunday arrives and I think I’m on the road to recover but the stomach acts up again. I go to intermediate care and they say we aren’t letting you leave as your heart is in Afib. Spend most of Sunday night in the ER, only to get into a room at about 1 am. I finally get out of the hospital late Sunday afternoon after many IV’s and meds to get my heart back in rhythm. When I think back, I believe I was probably in Afib for most of our trip. I spent most of Saturday walking about 13 miles in the heat to watch the Tour de France in Nice without drinking enough water. This was merely the worst of my experiences with AA recently.

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I’ve gotten on the plane only to be told the flight crew didn’t show up… that was great.

What is the deal with Euros and their nightmare of customs/security. Amsterdam made my head spin with how they handled the queue.

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I once had the reverse experience. On a work trip I was catching the last flight of the day from SFO to DEN. Standing in my boarding group I suddenly felt an intense gurgling. I badly wanted to get home that night, but there was no way I was gonna take a bumpy ride across the Rockies with diarrhea. So, I left the boarding area for the bathroom. Upon emerging I expected to see the gate area almost empty. Instead people were still milling about. Praise the god of mechanical delays!! Roughly 80 minutes later, after two Imodium and maybe seven trips to the bathroom, the plane and I were both flight-worthy.

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I spent a few days in old town san jose del cabo 2015ish. Condo-hotel type, like a studio apt. 1 block from the beach, right near everything. I think it was around $70 usd / night. Drove to cabo pulmo and todos santos.

Complain to AA. They’ll give you a few thousand miles for the mx delays/snafus. Not likely worth a DOT complaint.

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Dude, we’s brothers from different mothers!

My wife and I just went to southern Baja, left the day before thanksgiving and were there a week. We rented a car, drove up the peninsula to Los Barriles, La Ventana, La Paz, and only did one night on the marina in Cabo. First and last nights in SJD.

Chased roosterfish up and down the east cape with a fly rod and even caught a few of the little buggers. Fishing from the beach was a bit challenging due to the wind and the time of year but I did see them! The day we caught roosters was from a guided panga. The guide was cool and got my wife into dorado (mahi mahi), roosters, jacks, and a cabrilla grouper which we ate in tacos just off of the boat launch. I was on my own with the 10 wt and managed some jacks of various sorts and a handful of roosters. Lots of follows and those damn things are fast and fun!

The one night in Cabo was my least favorite but it’s quite a scene there and I’m glad we at least saw it. Also did a whale watching trip which my wife really wanted to do but they were pretty adamant about me not trying to catch one on the fly… Sensitive I guess…

I got extra security checks into and out of Cabo. Like, all of them… Even got to go to the special security office and have a nice conversation with a serious looking lady about my drone, and a little import tax ($20)… Can’t fly out of Cabo with fishing rod or hooks/flies, so had to check a bag there $40 and some more special security screening and a final extra security check at the gate… It was enough that my wife asked me if I had some sort of criminal history she didn’t know about… Haha.

They did manage to lose my fly rod but it arrived unharmed in the mail a couple of days later. No harm, no foul.

We drove all around and just had a blast.

No way I’d be captive at the all inclusive and you’d have to sedate me (with more than tequila) to get me on a cruise ship…

Overall amazing trip, can’t wait to go back!

No Dias Malos!

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I would really like to go back and do something similar. 3 days in todos santos, 2 days of fishing in cabo. Skip the all inclusive and enjoy some local food and pacificos.

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Looks like a 90 minute delay on every single AA flight today due to a software glitch. I guess the positive side is that you should have less of a chance of missing your connection if everything is delayed airline wide.

Happy Holidays.

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Good thing Santa makes his own travel arrangements :slight_smile:

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My director lives part time in San Bartolo. They do the big shopping in Los Barilles. She loves it down there.

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American Airlines it once took them 36 hours to get me from Costa Rica to Miami. They I had to drive to Detroit (rental car) because they told me two days to get another flight because of big snowstorm in the Northeast. American is frustrating. They did comp us an extra day in CR at a resort so that was good. It is my second best airplane story

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About ten years ago, my wife and I are flying AA from St Louis to Orange County. The plane we get on is a DC-9/MD80 model, one I thought had been retired prior to this century. We take off, and as the plane gets to maybe 1k feet, we hear a loud bang. Lights in the cabin go out, there is a strange “whirring” sound cycling, and the plane is not gaining any altitude. Everyone on the plane was actually quiet, except, strangely enough, one of the flight attendants, who was balling her eyes out. After what seemed like an eternity, but was probably 2 minutes, the captain came on, said we had a “mechanical issue,” and were returning to the airport. Landed without issues, although we did get a full escort from the airport fire department.

Anyways, after all that, AA only gave each passenger 5,000 miles. . . which expired after a year. About half the passengers didn’t even get on the later flight they got us on to get home. Not sure any would fly AA again.

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Reviving my old thread, but this time Delta is on my list. Flew back from Rochester, NY yesterday. Spent the long weekend in the finger lakes for my sister’s wedding (what a beautiful area).

Connection through DTW (man I hate detroilet), supposed to depart DTW at 7:45pm on an A350-941 (full flight to boot). Late arrival into DTW means a slight jog to get to the gate in time. Get to the gate, not boarding yet. Maintenance waiting for engineering to clear their fix. Many delays later, new A350 arrives, needs the full cleaning after INTL flight. Didn’t get in the air until almost 12:30 am. So thankful for the $12 meal voucher delta gave us…

Could have made the drive home from Penn Yan in the same amount of time it took us to fly… Just glad my work trip to Reno today got cancelled.

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I was booking a flight recently to Australia. Travelocity, Delta, United and American. I typically price based on 1 passenger … which was $X,XXX. When I went to book it for 2 passengers the price per passenger went up $500. So I started over and got the same pricing for 1 passenger and then the higher price for the same flights when booking 2 passengers.

One airline priced it at $X,XXX per passenger and when I went to book it … a notice appeared that while I was booking it the price had changed. Went up exactly $1,000 per passenger. The next day I tried again … and got the same notice and price increase. Fuck them. I booked with a different airline.