When your flight gets cancelled, look after yourself and don’t expect much from your (U.S.) airline.
We were reminded of that reality a couple of weeks ago when our AA #73 from Los Angeles to Sydney made a U-turn about 2 ½ hours into the flight and returned to LAX because of a cockpit that was getting colder and colder.
We support the pilots’ decision to turn back. After all, the temperature on the flight deck had dropped to 50 F (10 C) with another 11 hours of flying to go.
Back on the ground, we don’t think AA handled the situation particularly well. Those of us passengers with AA apps and on-board WiFi soon got in-flight messages indicating we’d been rebooked on a flight departing LAX around 8 AM. We discussed this with a couple of the flight attendants who were pleased for us.
It wasn’t until after we had disembarked at LAX that the manager on duty said the 8:00 AM booking was a “phantom” message, and that we’d be rebooked automatically after our original flight had officially been cancelled. Even with a two-hour head start at an AA hub (we admittedly landed at 3:30 AM), the communication was poor and passengers were left to mill about.
It took some time for the flight to show as cancelled, and the app continued to show the 8:00 AM flight. We heard one fellow passenger suggest that AA should simply transfer checked baggage to the phantom 8:00 AM flight.
It slowly dawned on us that we shouldn’t count on AA to rebook us, and we headed for a nearby Admirals Club Lounge. The queue there was shorter with employees already on duty, but it still moved slowly.
We got on the phone simultaneously and managed to make contact quickly with an AA phone agent. Had AA not led us down the garden path, we would otherwise have been calling before we walked off the plane. We told her politely that we wouldn’t settle for economy seats, as we had paid for business (with points - air miles), and we two geezers would no longer fly transoceanic overnight flights in coach. She managed to rebook us on a Qantas flight to Brisbane leaving that evening, with a connection to Sydney. She couldn’t route us to Melbourne, even though we would be missing our original Qantas SYD-MEL flight, booked separately.
We had finally reached the lounge employee at the counter while still talking with the phone agent, and we finalized some details and picked up hotel and food vouchers.
There was poor communication between the Sonesta Hotel and its shuttle contractor, and we ended up waiting an hour for a shuttle, lucky to secure the last two empty seats. The hotel check-in was another fiasco, taking us upwards of 10 minutes. Fortunately, we were first in line, but still didn’t get to our room until well after 5:00 AM.We shudder to think of the 10 people lined up behind us.
We returned to the airport after a few fitful hours of dozing, only to find the Qantas counter wasn’t yet open. We tried using an AA food voucher at the coffee stand, but it wouldn’t work, despite the employee’s best efforts. We saw later that the post-security PF Chang’s did not accept AA vouchers.
Oh, and when we got to the Qantas counter, we learned we had no seats assigned on that flight, contrary to what the AA phone agent had told us, and were thus sitting in different parts of the cabin. Fortunately, a kind and efficient young employee in the Qantas lounge was able to seat us across the aisle from each other in Row 2 of the Business cabin on the QF 787. Why the first agent couldn’t or wouldn’t do that a few minutes earlier is beyond us.
As far as “compensation,” AA, along with other US airlines, simply does not provide it in such situations. If the airline is responsible for the delay – for example mechanical problems and not weather problems – you will be rebooked on another flight and provided with hotel and food vouchers if the delay is long enough. That's it. The U.S. Department of Transportation provides a useful checklist of what various U.S. airlines commit to here:
https://www.transportation.gov/airconsumer/airline-cancellation-delay-dashboard
You can read AA's Customer Service Plan here:
https://www.aa.com/i18n/customer-service/support/customer-service-plan.jsp
We, for example, had to pay for our original Sydney airport arrival hotel because we had cancelled too late for a refund. We had to find a new way to get to our planned destination and also lost the admittedly modest cost of train tickets from Melbourne to the town of Sale where we were staying with friends.
What with AA’s less-than-stellar service at LAX, we endured some “pain and suffering” resulting from nearly five hours of flying in vain, and a barely worthwhile few hours of sleep in a mediocre hotel. Whether it’s good or bad, we realize that, had we been flying to or from Europe, we would have each received several hundred dollars in compensation for the delay under EU rules.
Coincidentally, a young relative suffered a worse experience on AA very recently on a short domestic weekend trip. She encountered flight cancellations both ways, essentially ruining what was to be a family get-together, and she ended up buying a walk-up ticket on another airline to get home on time.
We, on the other hand, did experience a successful trip to Australia, with the help of several of our Australian friends. We flew in business class on the long flights, had a great time in Australia, and enjoyed smooth flights home, so don’t feel bad for us.
It's a useful reminder not to believe any airline in such situations. AA actually lulled us into complacency for a few minutes, first with the phantom rebooking, and second with the claims that we’d be rebooked automatically. Fool me once… Fortunately the Wandering Warners did not quite become the Blundering Warners.
We figured out just in time that we needed to look out for ourselves, and managed to snag those business class seats on the Qantas flight to Brisbane leaving less than 24 hours after our original flight. It’s the second time within a year we’ve managed to rebook by phone while waiting in an airport customer service line, the first being in Seattle dealing with Alaska.
We always carry information needed to contact any airline we’re flying, whether a phone number, an email address, or even a social media contact. We hope we won’t need it, and we hope if we do need it that it will be useful.
An AA representative helpfully suggested that we make a claim if our credit card includes travel insurance. There’s more than a little irony in the source of the suggestion, but we may just do that.
In response to our second email, AA offered each of us a $100 travel credit good for one year. That's very roughly consistent with what Ben describes in One Mile at a Time:
https://onemileatatime.com/guides/american-airlines-delay-compensation/
All in all, we made it to Australia and back in relative comfort, and learned valuable lessons along the way. Case closed!
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