Recently, I took a trip with my family to Mexico. The plan was simple: Take a plane from Philadelphia and land in Dallas, Texas. We were going to connect with family members and from there we were supposed to catch the next flight to Mexico. We would have arrived around 2 pm with plenty of time to settle down and relax on our first day of vacation. But, of course, this article wouldn't be written if everything went along perfectly.
At 9 am we passed through security and were sitting in the gate, excited to get on our planes to reunite with our cousins. That's when the day started to go downhill. We were told that our plane was experiencing "mechanical repair" which could literally mean they're fixing a light bulb. Nothing could be seriously wrong with the plane at all. They then told us that the fix would take over 30 minutes and that there were no available planes to switch us over to. 20 minutes later they did finally switch us to another plane. Not only did it take another 10 minutes to begin boarding, but then they had us sit on the plane for over 40 minutes while the stewardesses moved trays and collected garbage from past passengers. I understand that the pilots have to talk to air control to get permission to take off but that should not have taken more than 40 minutes. At this time, I had already Tweeted to the Airlines letting them know the problem and to see if they could hold the plane even for 10 extra minutes because I knew we would be landing and cutting it a little close. Not only was this three hours before we would have landed, but I had my cousins talking to the people at the desk in Dallas asking for them to see if there was a way to hold the door so that we could get on the flight. You would think with three hours notice they would be able to do something, especially since it was the airline's fault in the first place.
When we landed we were told that two other flights had been held, but not ours. When there were other customers who were trying to connect with our flight as well. It is astonishing that they are able to hold other flights, but when it came to the third flight the passengers were looking to board they couldn't hold it. We landed in Dallas with four minutes to spare and ran/used the Skylink because there were no maps to direct us to our gate. We did not make it to our flight and not only did American Airlines do nothing with the tweets my cousins and I were sending to them, but they literally said:
"Fingers crossed" even though they had three hours of notice and I have previously seen flights held for one person. Over 13 people were missing this flight. They also didn't allow people on standby to get on the flight even though it was practically empty at that point. What infuriates me even more is that the plane landed 10 minutes early in Mexico. There was no reason that they couldn't have waited an extra three minutes.
It seems that I am not the only customer to have problems with American Airlines however, there are Facebook groups about the poor service that they have received, their Twitter is all about them trying to help their customers find their lost bags/ missing flights which seems to be a very frequent problem, articles online talking about how the airline is unprofessional and has problems like this all the time, their rating on this site are horrendous.
All in all, I'll stick with another airline when I fly. The service I received was terrible, there was no consideration, unlike when I flew Southwest in April and had an amazingly easy flight.
