Never Flying American Again

Us consultants like our loyalty programs.  For me, Delta is my airline, but, I will very occasionally deviate when it makes drastically more sense to fly someone else.  For example, when it takes 1 hour to get to Chicago on American vs. 4.5 hours with Delta.  Well, never again American Airlines...

This year, I’ve attempted to fly American Airlines 3 times.  And each flight was delayed or canceled all together. 

First, they put me in  “maybe” situation on whether or not out our flight would even go out, and told me that they would try and rebook me for next day or the one after that.  Which, kind of doesn’t work when you’re only taking a 2.5 day trip.  Fortunately, that flight did end up going out about an hour and a half late because they wanted the plane to get stuck in Chicago if it was going to be stuck.

Okay, I will give you that there was a pretty big snow storm that night.... but worse was the return trip, where, with only a few clouds in the sky and a light drizzle, American decided to cancel my return flight.  But, not to worry, they told me.  Since I was on the last flight of the night on Sunday I had been automatically rebooked for Monday at 10pm - which wasn’t gonna work for this girl. So, I tried to convince them to put me on an earlier flight.  They said that was no problem and that they could accommodate me at 5pm (meaning I’d still miss the entire day of work) but no earlier.  Being the stubborn person I am, I told American that I was sick of struggling with them and to refund my ticket and I’d just drive it instead.  Now I can add the lovely trip from Chicago to Des Moines to the list of drives I have no desire to repeat.

Alright, so maybe it was just Chicago that had issues.  And maybe I just had a bad weekend, so I’ll give it a try once more going through Dallas, I think.  Flight check in time is 5:45pm and at 5:44pm, my flight gets canceled.   Here is where my attention to checking in early comes in handy, because I am likely one of the first people on that flight to notice the cancellation and call American right away.  Only to enjoy their lovely hold music – interjected every 3 minutes with a message telling me that I could get help online  - for the next half hour.  (Which, when the website tells you that you have to call, just adds insult to injury.)  Fortunately, in this case I was able to claim I had a very important meeting the following morning, so they were actually able to rebook me successfully onto an earlier flight.

I was at least lucky in these situations to always end up where I wanted to be eventually.  But, after all that hassle, I think I will stick with Delta from now on.