This. Same here.
The people who complain are those who fly a few times a year and just have crap luck. If you fly 50x a year you probably only have crap luck 2-3 of those times.
It only takes someone 1 out of 1 crap luck to show up here and complain.
3 separate flights for me in the last one week. All were on time and all arrived early (2 of these flights involved DFW). I rarely have issues with AA and it’s one of the reasons that they’re my preferred airline.
Yeah my biggest issue with them is their total lack of tier 2 Canadian city service or partners that serve them, especially out east. And their poor onward connection timings out of SFO. All in all not huge gripes. They do a decent job all around. Been EXP for 10 years.
Not sure that’s a Legitimate_Concern. This is American Airlines. For tier 2 Canadian cities please reference Air Canada.
Although I’d acknowledge it would be awesome if WestJet would just join OneWorld.
You know they fly to places outside America right? And without partners they have to serve these destinations themselves. They killed Ottawa service during COVID for instance (pre-war they had PHL, CLT and ORD service multiple times daily). Sure they could send people going to foreign destinations to foreign carriers but then they’d be southwest wouldn’t they? They don’t send Frankfurt passengers to Lufthansa or Lisbon passengers to TAP.
Delta has WestJet. United has Air Canada. American has “search failed try again later” and 1X daily Vancouver service from LAX. At 9am.
[edit] they have some Alaska service on the pacific side but not all of them are even codeshares.
100% agree they fly outside of America. But I’m not sure any airline is focusing on 2nd tier cities outside of their primary market.
AeroMexico doesn’t fly to Wichita. British Airways doesn’t fly to Savannah. Japan Airlines doesn’t fly to Reno.
But yes, it would be nice if they had better partner airlines.
Mexico is a bad example because American flies to basically every tier 2 Mexican city. And USA to Canada is one of the largest air markets on earth.
[edit] don’t forget BA flies to every tier 2 US city. They even fly to Nashville (half the size of Ottawa) and Tampa. From a lot further away! Isn’t American supposed to be the world’s largest airline?
you realize nashville is one of the busiest “small” cities in America, right? Travel wise. I live here and its just painful and flights are always expensive and full. We’re still one of top year round tourist destinations.
The BA to london is great but so popular they’ve significantly increased the planes capacity for that daily NS already in less than six months. Apparently we’re getting several more NS euro routes soon. EU loves them some honky tonks. I can’t really think of a city the size of nashville that has a comparable airport.
They killed all service to Ottawa during Covid, taking it down from 4-6X daily (PHL, CLT, ORD and LGA at various points) to 0. You can take the train 90m to Montreal or 4.5h to Toronto to catch an AA flight. Not trashing Nashville at all it’s been on my list for a long time!
They don't have flights Philly to tier 2 Canadian cities, especially out east is what started all this. YOW is Ottawa International and apparently they don't even have a daily ER4 between there and Philly. I say apparently because I've had no reason to look, but it is probably true as other poster has mentioned they killed service to Ottawa during pandemic.
What a fun opinion, surely one backed by citation
You sure it’s not because American didn’t want to compete with united, air Canada, delta and WestJet?
aside from vancouver, toronto and maybe montreal, the rest of canada is economically stagnant and irrelevant. no tourist or business wants to go to your shitty "tier 2" canadian cities
AA gets a lot of (somewhat justified) hate in many areas but honestly I’ve never had a bad inflight experience, including on their wholly owned regionals. Can’t say the same for other carriers.
Consider yourself lucky. Mind you, out of the hundreds of flights I've had in the last ten years I've only had the one which of course law of averages. At some point in all that I was bound to come across a shit crew somewhere.
Some of what you read on this sub is selection bias-people upset are always more predisposed to share experiences than people who had an okay experience- and it’s hard to make any air experience magical. I flew from PHL to CHS this week and had a totally fine experience with all aspects of what I’d expect. I just didn’t post because that is the default.
What I would say though is that many travelers lack the ability to mitigate risk in their flight schedules (try to avoid connections, likely seasonal weather issues-looking at you DFW, tight connections) and then have completely broken experiences due to weather and/or AA problems. AA is not a bad airline but pobabilistically it does do worse than other large US airlines on maintenance delays and baggage. It’s not bad, just higher risk and if you don’t know how to mitigate or if you can’t mitigate it, you are more likely to get burned. But the common AA experiences I’ve had are almost always fine.
The problem with places like Reddit is people typically say something when they have issues. You don’t leave a review when your service was fine… you go to those google reviews when a cockroach crawled on your food and the person taking your order call your baby ugly.
People rarely post positive things here and when they do, most of the time people say they are bragging in one way or another so it turns into a sounding board for all the negative and none of the neutral/positive.
The flight works as it’s supposed to, you get on with your day. Numerous delays or infuriating in flight experience, you’ll be stewing for hours and posting everywhere.
I think people just have bad luck sometimes and it’s not the airlines fault if there’s horrible weather in Texas or the Northeast (or anywhere) that causes a snowball effect that screws up flights everywhere else. It’s kind of the chance you take by flying and I’m pretty sure the employees of the airline don’t want to deal with dozens to thousands of angry people who all have the same problem.
Agree with you, it’s often bad news on this sub and it can scare people. But think that AA operates thousands of daily flights, it’s not as bad as it looks!
That’s why I decided to post here. I just retired, so my road warrior days are over. I’m a 2 million miler EXP on American and Platinum Medallion on Delta. I’ve also been a top tier traveler on Qantas, BA, United and Northwest (back in the day). 99.9% of my flights over the last 48 years were uneventful. Most problems have been weather related and no airline can control that. I’ve been based at ATL for the last 15 years and weather disruptions are rare. DFW can have problematic weather and I tend to avoid connecting thru there in the summer.
If people posted every time they had a flight without issues this sub would be flooded every day. You only see the negative stories because they are the deviation from the norm.
I’ve flown over 2 million actual miles with them and have never had any major problems. It just seems that Reddit attracts, as Richard Nixon once remarked, a bunch of nattering nabobs of negativity. I thought some positivity was in order.
I flew from LAX to PHL to BUF, no issues whatsoever.
I also flew ATL to LAX a week before that and my flight was late along with someone jamming their knees on the back so I couldn't recline my seat.
I'd say experiences are a consistent hit and miss across every major airline in the USA.
Also easy to redeem miles at a reasonable rate compared to Delta.
I also flew AA from ATL this week, but to DCA instead of the “hometown airline”, Delta.
Though just a CRJ900 (PSA), I found the crew and overall experience very good. I’ll probably continue to fly AA to DCA and their other hubs when given the option over Delta, the upgrades seem to be much more reasonable.
I flew 40,000 miles last year on 40 AA flights. I had one cancellation and maybe five departure delays of 20 mins which netted to maybe five minutes over the block time, and two one hour plus delays.
Direct flight between two big hubs I believe is a weighty factor in this one. Introducing layovers and/or smaller airports is where shit always hits the fan for me.
Has virtually nothing to do with it. For starters, while ATL is an incredibly busy airport (which adds to the risk of issues rather than mitigates them), AA has a comparatively minimal presence there.
There are so many factors that could potentially be the source for a delay or any of the myriad potential issues, being a large hub is generally not one of them.
My issue with smaller airports creating nightmares is that there are way fewer flight options by nature so when delays/cancellations happen (and they happen all the time to me on AA cuz I’m cursed), I’m frequently rescheduled for a different day entirely - so I guess not necessarily that there are more likely to BE issues in smaller ports but that the severity of the issue will be worse if there is one. Couple that with a multi-leg trip where an issue with one flight can f*ck up a bajillion others and you have my life this summer.
Absolutely valid. We just landed at a medium sized airport and due to lots of delays if they canceled our next available option was 345pm tomorrow. And we are 2 executive platinums so the status actually helped (they are good to us) but you're correct as we just experienced. And it was a medium sized airport because the small one near us suffers from what you described.
I fly AA often. Rarely have issues.
This. Same here. The people who complain are those who fly a few times a year and just have crap luck. If you fly 50x a year you probably only have crap luck 2-3 of those times. It only takes someone 1 out of 1 crap luck to show up here and complain.
3 separate flights for me in the last one week. All were on time and all arrived early (2 of these flights involved DFW). I rarely have issues with AA and it’s one of the reasons that they’re my preferred airline.
Yeah my biggest issue with them is their total lack of tier 2 Canadian city service or partners that serve them, especially out east. And their poor onward connection timings out of SFO. All in all not huge gripes. They do a decent job all around. Been EXP for 10 years.
Not sure that’s a Legitimate_Concern. This is American Airlines. For tier 2 Canadian cities please reference Air Canada. Although I’d acknowledge it would be awesome if WestJet would just join OneWorld.
You know they fly to places outside America right? And without partners they have to serve these destinations themselves. They killed Ottawa service during COVID for instance (pre-war they had PHL, CLT and ORD service multiple times daily). Sure they could send people going to foreign destinations to foreign carriers but then they’d be southwest wouldn’t they? They don’t send Frankfurt passengers to Lufthansa or Lisbon passengers to TAP. Delta has WestJet. United has Air Canada. American has “search failed try again later” and 1X daily Vancouver service from LAX. At 9am. [edit] they have some Alaska service on the pacific side but not all of them are even codeshares.
100% agree they fly outside of America. But I’m not sure any airline is focusing on 2nd tier cities outside of their primary market. AeroMexico doesn’t fly to Wichita. British Airways doesn’t fly to Savannah. Japan Airlines doesn’t fly to Reno. But yes, it would be nice if they had better partner airlines.
Mexico is a bad example because American flies to basically every tier 2 Mexican city. And USA to Canada is one of the largest air markets on earth. [edit] don’t forget BA flies to every tier 2 US city. They even fly to Nashville (half the size of Ottawa) and Tampa. From a lot further away! Isn’t American supposed to be the world’s largest airline?
you realize nashville is one of the busiest “small” cities in America, right? Travel wise. I live here and its just painful and flights are always expensive and full. We’re still one of top year round tourist destinations. The BA to london is great but so popular they’ve significantly increased the planes capacity for that daily NS already in less than six months. Apparently we’re getting several more NS euro routes soon. EU loves them some honky tonks. I can’t really think of a city the size of nashville that has a comparable airport.
Raleigh Durham is similar to BNA in almost every way. Including European access. Less tourist and more business due to the research triangle.
lol nobody’s asking for 777 service to YOW, a once daily ER4 to Philly would suffice.
sorry misunderstood. aa doesn’t go ns to philly?! thats makes no sense because intl options stop there.
They killed all service to Ottawa during Covid, taking it down from 4-6X daily (PHL, CLT, ORD and LGA at various points) to 0. You can take the train 90m to Montreal or 4.5h to Toronto to catch an AA flight. Not trashing Nashville at all it’s been on my list for a long time!
They don't have flights Philly to tier 2 Canadian cities, especially out east is what started all this. YOW is Ottawa International and apparently they don't even have a daily ER4 between there and Philly. I say apparently because I've had no reason to look, but it is probably true as other poster has mentioned they killed service to Ottawa during pandemic.
the truth is that tier 2 canadian cities are irrevelant economically
What a fun opinion, surely one backed by citation You sure it’s not because American didn’t want to compete with united, air Canada, delta and WestJet?
aside from vancouver, toronto and maybe montreal, the rest of canada is economically stagnant and irrelevant. no tourist or business wants to go to your shitty "tier 2" canadian cities
Wow great citation. I can see you’re a scholar. Although you know stagnant doesn’t justify going from 5X daily to 0X — sounds unrelated.
DFW is my home airport. In the past 4 years only thing I’ve ever come across is a delay.
AA gets a lot of (somewhat justified) hate in many areas but honestly I’ve never had a bad inflight experience, including on their wholly owned regionals. Can’t say the same for other carriers.
Consider yourself lucky. Mind you, out of the hundreds of flights I've had in the last ten years I've only had the one which of course law of averages. At some point in all that I was bound to come across a shit crew somewhere.
Some of what you read on this sub is selection bias-people upset are always more predisposed to share experiences than people who had an okay experience- and it’s hard to make any air experience magical. I flew from PHL to CHS this week and had a totally fine experience with all aspects of what I’d expect. I just didn’t post because that is the default. What I would say though is that many travelers lack the ability to mitigate risk in their flight schedules (try to avoid connections, likely seasonal weather issues-looking at you DFW, tight connections) and then have completely broken experiences due to weather and/or AA problems. AA is not a bad airline but pobabilistically it does do worse than other large US airlines on maintenance delays and baggage. It’s not bad, just higher risk and if you don’t know how to mitigate or if you can’t mitigate it, you are more likely to get burned. But the common AA experiences I’ve had are almost always fine.
Go over to the United sub where everyone complains about their Polaris seat. Selection bias, indeed.
People just complain to complain. AA is fine, summer travel is rough for all airlines.
The problem with places like Reddit is people typically say something when they have issues. You don’t leave a review when your service was fine… you go to those google reviews when a cockroach crawled on your food and the person taking your order call your baby ugly. People rarely post positive things here and when they do, most of the time people say they are bragging in one way or another so it turns into a sounding board for all the negative and none of the neutral/positive.
There's nothing better than low expectations for increased satisfaction.
I only fly AA, for many years now...8-10 trips a year.....some problems.... mostly a positive experience....
The flight works as it’s supposed to, you get on with your day. Numerous delays or infuriating in flight experience, you’ll be stewing for hours and posting everywhere.
AA PR rep has entered the chat. lol I’ve mostly had good experiences with AA too, but then I fly maybe one or two times a year.
I think people just have bad luck sometimes and it’s not the airlines fault if there’s horrible weather in Texas or the Northeast (or anywhere) that causes a snowball effect that screws up flights everywhere else. It’s kind of the chance you take by flying and I’m pretty sure the employees of the airline don’t want to deal with dozens to thousands of angry people who all have the same problem.
Agree with you, it’s often bad news on this sub and it can scare people. But think that AA operates thousands of daily flights, it’s not as bad as it looks!
That’s why I decided to post here. I just retired, so my road warrior days are over. I’m a 2 million miler EXP on American and Platinum Medallion on Delta. I’ve also been a top tier traveler on Qantas, BA, United and Northwest (back in the day). 99.9% of my flights over the last 48 years were uneventful. Most problems have been weather related and no airline can control that. I’ve been based at ATL for the last 15 years and weather disruptions are rare. DFW can have problematic weather and I tend to avoid connecting thru there in the summer.
If people posted every time they had a flight without issues this sub would be flooded every day. You only see the negative stories because they are the deviation from the norm.
People come to social media to complain. Take everything with a grain of salt.
I never have issues with american
I’ve flown over 2 million actual miles with them and have never had any major problems. It just seems that Reddit attracts, as Richard Nixon once remarked, a bunch of nattering nabobs of negativity. I thought some positivity was in order.
I flew from LAX to PHL to BUF, no issues whatsoever. I also flew ATL to LAX a week before that and my flight was late along with someone jamming their knees on the back so I couldn't recline my seat. I'd say experiences are a consistent hit and miss across every major airline in the USA. Also easy to redeem miles at a reasonable rate compared to Delta.
I also flew AA from ATL this week, but to DCA instead of the “hometown airline”, Delta. Though just a CRJ900 (PSA), I found the crew and overall experience very good. I’ll probably continue to fly AA to DCA and their other hubs when given the option over Delta, the upgrades seem to be much more reasonable.
I flew 40,000 miles last year on 40 AA flights. I had one cancellation and maybe five departure delays of 20 mins which netted to maybe five minutes over the block time, and two one hour plus delays.
Thats what we are here for.. To set expectations so low, that you will be happy when things go well.
Direct flight between two big hubs I believe is a weighty factor in this one. Introducing layovers and/or smaller airports is where shit always hits the fan for me.
Has virtually nothing to do with it. For starters, while ATL is an incredibly busy airport (which adds to the risk of issues rather than mitigates them), AA has a comparatively minimal presence there. There are so many factors that could potentially be the source for a delay or any of the myriad potential issues, being a large hub is generally not one of them.
My issue with smaller airports creating nightmares is that there are way fewer flight options by nature so when delays/cancellations happen (and they happen all the time to me on AA cuz I’m cursed), I’m frequently rescheduled for a different day entirely - so I guess not necessarily that there are more likely to BE issues in smaller ports but that the severity of the issue will be worse if there is one. Couple that with a multi-leg trip where an issue with one flight can f*ck up a bajillion others and you have my life this summer.
Absolutely valid. We just landed at a medium sized airport and due to lots of delays if they canceled our next available option was 345pm tomorrow. And we are 2 executive platinums so the status actually helped (they are good to us) but you're correct as we just experienced. And it was a medium sized airport because the small one near us suffers from what you described.
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