Dear American Airlines: Never Again

Aug. 9, 2016

W. Douglas Parker

CEO, American Airlines

4255 Amon Carter Boulevard

Ft Worth, TX 76155

Dear Mr. Parker,

Enclosed please find printouts of two eVouchers sent to me on Aug. 4, 2016 from June Rabe in the Customer Relations department at American Airlines. My sending these printouts to you is entirely symbolic in nature, as they are eVouchers, but I am doing it because I want to underscore my point to you that my mother, Ruth Bass, and I are refusing them. We are refusing them because on Monday, Aug. 1 we vowed we will never fly American Airlines again, and we intend to keep that vow. Below is the story behind why we made that vow. I hope that you will read on.

On Thursday, July 28, my 82-year-old mother and I set out to fly from Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks, CT to Portland International Airport in Oregon to attend the memorial service for her sister, Janet Mandaville, who passed away in April after a long and terrible battle with cancer. We had two scheduled stops along the way — Reagan in Washington and O’Hare in Chicago. My mother had booked the trip with two stops because she was trying to find the cheapest ticket for us, as my disposable income is limited. Even so, each round trip ticket totaled just over $800 each. Not exactly ‘cheap.’ Although the experience with your customer service and ticketing agents certainly was.

The trip from Bradley to Reagan was uneventful — and what a lovely descent into Washington it was, past the monuments. I had ordered wheelchairs for my mother, because at 82 she doesn’t get around as well as she used to, and sometimes these airport walks can feel like miles (or in some cases actually be a mile). In this case, the departing gate was right next to the arriving gate!

We boarded the plane. We taxied out to the runway. Then the captain came on and said there was an issue in Chicago, they had closed the airport to incoming traffic due to weather. We sat on the plane for several hours. Then we taxied back, and we all got off and entered what can only be described as a chaotic mess. We were not clearly told if they flight had been cancelled, but it was mentioned that we should try and rebook if we had connections. We were told a “team of agents” would be at the courtesy desk.

So we got in a mile-long line for the courtesy desk (the team was 2 agents, which, if we were playing doubles tennis, would be considered a team but otherwise — not a team. A team, to me, would be 5.) While in line for 2 hours, I called the 800 number. I got in the cyber line for the phone for a call back. But then I kept redialing. Meanwhile the line behind us grew and grew and grew because flights were being cancelled and delayed all over the eastern Seaboard.

I got an agent on the line. She told me our flight had not been cancelled, but merely delayed, and was expected to take off in 30 minutes. When I noted that we had in fact already missed our connection in Chicago, she rebooked us on a flight that was scheduled to leave 5 minutes after we were scheduled to land. “We’ll never make that,” I told her. “It’s been delayed too,” she said. “You will have plenty of time.”

So we made our way to the new gate, and got on the same plane, and took off. Here’s a thought for a flight such as this (and based on all the horror stories AA customers were sharing throughout this ordeal, I think flights such as this are a pretty regular occurrence) — flight attendants should make an announcement asking anyone who is NOT making a connection to STAY IN THEIR SEAT so that those of us who are racing to a connection can get off quickly.

According to your AA app, we were to land at a gate that was literally right next to the gate from which we were departing. The app continued to say that through the whole flight. It even said that after we landed. But when we landed, it was at a gate that was a considerable distance from the one we needed to be at. And no wheelchair in sight.

And so I begged my 82-year-old mother to go as fast as she could, and I took her bags, and I ran to the gate to ask them to wait for her, she was right behind me. And the door was closed and the plane was gone. “Please,” I said to the agent behind the desk, “we were told we were going to be able to make this flight, that it was delayed.” “It’s gone,” she said. “It left on time.” “But you knew we were coming,” I said. “It’s gone,” she said. “Can you rebook me?” I asked. “No,” she said, handing me a piece of paper with your 800 number on it. “Call the number.” “Please,” I said. “I can’t,” she said (and this is all without making eye contact). “But there’s a flight to Portland leaving out K20. That way,” and she points.

My mother has now caught up. My 82-year-old mother. It’s now 8:30 p.m., Chicago time. That’s 9:30 p.m., Eastern time. She’s exhausted.

So I tell her we need to start walking while I call. The first time I call, the agent tells me there are no more flights out that night to Portland. I tell her my story, mother, funeral, long day. She says “Try United” and hangs up. HANGS UP THE PHONE ON ME. I call back. (Meanwhile, walking, walking, walking through O’Hare with my 82-year-old mother.) The next agent I get tells me she cannot help me because according to her computer MY PLANE FROM DC HASN’T LANDED YET. I assure her I have two feet on the ground and I need her to rebook me and isn’t there a flight leaving from Gate K20? She puts me on hold.

I plant my mother in a chair. I am desperate for a human being to HELP me. I walk past gate K20, and it says flight to Portland leaving in 25 minutes. I rush up to the desk and ask the gentleman behind it if there are seats. I tell him quickly what happened. I wish I had gotten his name but I did not. He tells me bring back our IDs and he will get us on.

I go get my mom and the IDs and when I return he has 2 tickets for me. This flight was supposed to have left Chicago at 5 p.m., it didn’t take off until 9:30 p.m., so that flight’s bad luck was our good fortune. We landed in Portland at 12:30 a.m. — 3:30 a.m. Eastern time — and of course there’s no wheelchair waiting for us because we weren’t supposed to be on that plane. Have you ever walked the FULL LENGTH of PDX? It’s a mile. I honestly at one point thought my mom wasn’t going to make it.

But she did. And throughout the weekend, we attended the memorial service, and spent quality time with our West Coast relatives, and did some touristy things.

On Sunday morning, I went on the AA website to confirm our seats and print our boarding passes for our 6 a.m. Monday flight from PDX to Dallas-Fort Worth. From DFW we would connect to Bradley.

There were no seats available to claim except for 4 that would cost an extra $68. I once again called the 800 number.

“You can’t get your seats until tomorrow at the airport,” says the customer service lady.

“Why,” says me.

“Because they aren’t available,” says she.

“But I have seats on this plane,” says me.

“Yes,” says she.

“I don’t mean to be dense, but if I have seats on this plane, why can’t you give them to me now,” says me.

“Because they aren’t available now,” says she.

“But I have seats on this plane?” asks me.

“Yes, I promise,” says she. She tells me “get to the airport early.” I reply that my mother is 82 years old and this is so much easier said than done. “I understand,” she says. She is able to reserve me wheelchairs for my mom.

Out of sheer frustration, I fill out the Email Us section of your website, but I am limited to 2,000 characters, and clearly this story is longer than 2,000 characters. Then I start Tweeting. Because when all else fails, when you follow all the rules and do what everyone tells you, and you PAY YOUR MONEY, and still everything about the experience is dysfunctional and BROKEN, you Tweet.

Your social media team, which I assume gets free counseling as part of their job because reading through your Twitter feed is like getting bombed in a foxhole, finally responds to the Tweet that says: ‘.@AmericanAir I hope you never have to get your 82y/o mom up at 3am to get her to the airport to get seats bk you can’t get them online.’

They Tweet me I now have seats, and go ahead and confirm online. I see the seats (yay!) but can’t print boarding passes. I Tweet. They Tweet, OK it’s fixed, try now. Doesn’t work. I Tweet. They Tweet. Ultimately, I decide to get a ride to the airport and go to an American ticket desk and ask them to print my boarding passes. Which I do. The stone-faced ticket agent prints my passes and I am on my way.

That night in the hotel room I notice on the boarding pass that our departure time says 9 a.m., not 6 a.m., with an arrival in DFW after our connection takes off. I call the 800 number and this is where I meet Alyse. That’s all I know — Alyse. Sunday, July 31, 8 p.m. PST. Alyse. She wanted to do her job.

Let’s back up for just a second to make sure that you understand that the ticket agent at the desk in the Portland airport PRINTED ME BOARDING PASSES FOR A TRIP SHE KNEW WASN’T GOING TO WORK AND DID NOT SAY A WORD TO ME. NOT A WORD.

OK, Alyse. My savior. I tell her my newest issue. She rebooks my trip, now PDX to O’Hare to Bradley, with wheelchairs for my mom from start to finish. I ask her if she can get me seats and she says no (no??!!??) but I can do it online. I give her the Cliff Notes version of my travails and ask her to stay on the phone with me while I try. In breaking news, it doesn’t work. Alyse looks. She says try now. It doesn’t work. She says hmmmm. She says she is going to put me on hold. She comes back after a while and says OK, I think we got it figured out, try now. And it works! If I had confetti I would’ve thrown it in the air. She explains that she had to get her supervisor, and together they realized that the wheelchair reservation was blocking the seat confirmation. (You might want to get that fixed). Then I ask her to stay with me until I am certain I can print these boarding passes. Which I do. And I thank her from the bottom of my heart and remember to ask her name so I can Tweet her awesomeness.

And so the next morning (8/1) we go to the airport and a really sweet young man pushes my mother in the wheelchair the mile from the door to the gate and we pass by the DFW gate and there are some truly miserable looking souls sitting there and now it says the departure time is 10:30. (You might want to fix that too.) So at least we’ve got that going for us.

In Chicago we are met with a wheelchair and another nice young man and he asks my mother if she needs to visit a restroom or anything. So bravo to those wheelchair-pushing folks (I’m guessing they don’t actually work for you — maybe they work for the airport? Because they are prompt and courteous and good at their job.). And then we board this plane — an old and dirty American Eagle plane in which the AC is “half broken” according to the pilot, and then we all get back off because there are FAA-ordered delays because of either weather or congestion, it depends on who is lying to you at the moment and we wait a while and then we get back on and then we get home, about an hour after we were originally supposed to.

And then on Aug. 4 I got the canned response to my 2,000 character version of the story from June Rabe, acknowledging how you “let us down” and “disappointed us” and blah blah blah here’s two $100 eVouchers. Whatever. Literally, What. Ever. First of all, it’s insulting because of the value of the offered apology vs. the cost of the trip. Second, how about the time we lost? The stress. The physical toll it took on my 82-year-old mother. The lying. The incompetence. The rudeness. The fact that of all the AA employees we dealt with in the course of a Thursday-Monday trip across the country — more than 2 dozen total, I’d guess — we found only 4 that not only COULD do their job, but WANTED to do their job. The utter disregard for the consumer. For your client. For US.

Technically, American Airlines has one job — to get us safely to and from our destination. Technically, you did that. But there are subtexts to that one job — safely, with courtesy, respect, acknowledgment that we are people who have lives outside of this travel, and competence. So other than the fact that yes, you did get us from Point A to Point B and back to Point A without killing us, you wholly and entirely did not do your job.

And so, the two eVouchers will sit untouched in my email until they expire on 8/4/2017 and for as long as I live, I will never ever fly American Airlines again. I promise to grossly overspend on tickets from any other airline in order to not fly your airline.

Because what it all comes down to, Mr. Parker, is this: Would you want your mother to go through what my mother went through, at the hands of your employees?

Sincerely,

Elissa Bass

Enclosure

cc: AA Board of Directors

AA Customer Relations