American is a joke. Had a flight that was supposed to leave at 340 from dfw to phx and we had to go thru 3 planes to find one that finally worked. Here are the airport now and they deplaned us because the ac was Broken and now they are trying to source a new airplane.

Just checked in to go to BKK, 2 United flights and 1 Thai. Last time I got hung up in SFO and they changed planes which cost me my premium economy seat. Hope things are smoother this time.

Last week coming back from DC on United, the plane was listed as 6 hours late. Eventually a gate was given and we boarded. We asked the crew what had happened. They said they were taken off a Tokyo bound flight to come with us to San Antonio. They were perplexed.

Supposed to go to Las Vegas Tuesday, but got a note the runways are under construction and delays are common. Who knows how to plan anymore.

In SFO now, about to head to hotel and Indian Food. Jumping on Korean Air Business class tomorrow to BKK. Swore off American airline groups in Asia long ago. Smooth travels for you!

Hoyt Ag said:

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In SFO now, about to head to hotel and Indian Food. Jumping on Korean Air Business class tomorrow to BKK. Swore off American airline groups in Asia long ago. Smooth travels for you!

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The South Korean lounge is nice.

If you have not already, hit up United on social media. I did this a few months ago and was finally able to get a refund processed. They denied 3 times or so via email but one Twitter message and it was resolved in 24 hours.

fka ftc said:

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If you have not already, hit up United on social media. I did this a few months ago and was finally able to get a refund processed. They denied 3 times or so via email but one Twitter message and it was resolved in 24 hours.

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I second this. I exclusively use direct messages on Twitter to communicate with United and I've always been able to get issues resolved that way.

TXCityAggie said:

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fka ftc said:

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If you have not already, hit up United on social media. I did this a few months ago and was finally able to get a refund processed. They denied 3 times or so via email but one Twitter message and it was resolved in 24 hours.

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I second this. I exclusively using direct messages on Twitter to communicate with United and I've always been able to get issues resolved that way.

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I've been out of the corporate world since social media really took off, but it has to be similar to the "incident response teams" I worked with back then. Used to be a site where you could sort out the email addresses of the CEO of places like AT&T (they changed regularly and did not follow usual naming conventions. An email to them was still picked up by the dedicated team and you could get immediate action.

It's a shame you have to resort to those measures but they can be effective.

All airlines can have this issue. I had this happen on United a month ago. 2 PM flight cancelled around 10 am due to aircraft maintenance. Rebooked on a 4 PM flight. Made it to the runway, sat for 30 mins, and then returned to gate due to a hydraulics issue. Found a 3rd plane and finally took off around 8 pm.

"Dedicated team". More than likely (from experience) it just gets handed to someone else that gets told "Fix this now" and everything else gets put on hold.

AtlAg05 said:

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"Dedicated team". More than likely (from experience) it just gets handed to someone else that gets told "Fix this now" and everything else gets put on hold.

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I had to resort to social media to get some issues sorted out with points we were due from Southwest after the Christmas debacle.

In my case it had to do with delegation of authority. The customer service reps on the phone had no authority to correct the issue. They could see the problem but couldn't fix it. I went round and round with them for a few months until one service rep told me to stop calling.

I reached out on social media (I think it was Twitter; I keep an account there specifically for things like this) and my problem was resolved in about 5 minutes. I was happy to have the issue corrected, but it was so frustrating that I spent so long on the phone if sending a DM on Twitter was all I had to do. And there is no reason customers should be forced to use social media to get properly compensated.

fka ftc said:

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If you have not already, hit up United on social media. I did this a few months ago and was finally able to get a refund processed. They denied 3 times or so via email but one Twitter message and it was resolved in 24 hours.

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I did that actually. I also filed a DOT complaint. They emailed me over the weekend saying my refund was approved, but I wont believe them until I see the chargeback on my CC

To add to this post,
I had a 6am flight ICT-DEN on Mon 6/26, I woke up at 3 and noticed my text; flight canceled.
It said due to weather, but my plane was already in wichita, and there was absolutely no weather from Wichita to Denver that day. So I called BS.

The remaining 2-3 flights that day were already all standby. It auto booked me for the next day.

Luckily, my wife drove to Wichita on like the 22nd, (I flew in the 24th) and she was planning on driving back the 26th or 27th anyway. I was only flying so I could get into the office. So it worked out, she cut the trip a day short and I just rode home with her and worked in the car.


I used 8500 points for that flight. A week or so later, United emails me saying sorry, and gave me 30k points.

So it was a win overall for me.

Weird thing was, they didn't just 'give' me the points. It was an offer, that I had to go 'claim'. I put in name and confirmation number.

Makes me wonder how many people don't end up claiming it, so while United does right, they still manage to keep 10-20% of the 'rebates' due to lazy/dumb customers.

Over the last year of flying not one flight has taken off at the advertised time….not one….SWA, American or Delta…

Hoyt Ag said:

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In SFO now, about to head to hotel and Indian Food. Jumping on Korean Air Business class tomorrow to BKK. Swore off American airline groups in Asia long ago. Smooth travels for you!

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That's brave. Curry sweats and a 50%+ chance of vindaloo squirts on a trans-Pacific flight would scare the hell out of me.

Quote:

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I used 8500 points for that flight. A week or so later, United emails me saying sorry, and gave me 30k points.

So it was a win overall for me.

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Hope you got those 8500 points back on top of that. I had to fight United to get refunded for a cancelled flight home (see my earlier post in this thread) and it just now processed. Crazy how I even had to do that and it's not automatic once a flight is cancelled (assuming no rebooking).

barbacoa taco said:

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Quote:

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I used 8500 points for that flight. A week or so later, United emails me saying sorry, and gave me 30k points.

So it was a win overall for me.

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Hope you got those 8500 points back on top of that. I had to fight United to get refunded for a cancelled flight home (see my earlier post in this thread) and it just now processed. Crazy how I even had to do that and it's not automatic once a flight is cancelled (assuming no rebooking).

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I canceled the rebooked flight as soon as I saw they booked me for the next day, and got my 8500 points refunded immediately. I thought that was standard procedure for them if you cancel... but I see now you said they canceled your flight, (and didn't rebook you I assume)

That's never happened to me, so can't comment.

there were no flights available because it was an infrequent route and demand was super high. still super frustrated they couldn't put me on another airline and put up a fight on my refund my request but it all worked out in the end.

We have a lot of regular travelers and move a lot of folks for training and other meetings as well and the amount of issues this past few weeks has skyrocketed. Today we had several guys come into Houston and they said the rental car facility at Bush was an absolute madhouse.

I have a few trips in the coming months and I'm now taking the 1st flight out in the morning out of IAH to help minimize the potential for delays. Coming home will do the same and just leave early in the AM coming coming instead of trying to catch the last flight home the night before.

We travel a lot around the world but this connecting flight in Charlotte (on the way back from Punta Cana) was the worst.

[url] https://www.wbtv.com/2023/04/21/caught-camera-american-airlines-flight-returns-gate-after-fire-clt/?outputType=amp[/url]

A coworker shot the video used in the article.

Basically on take off the engine blew up and the wing was briefly on fire. I talked to a pilot the next morning with 39 years of experience and he said if that had happened past the "point of no return" line we would have had a 50/50 chance of crashing.

Edit: our coworker is not one of the guys cursing in the background - - watch with no sound

62strat said:

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Verbally, around Denver at least, you certainly say DIA.. denver international airport.

But if you're writing/speaking in airport codes.. get it right!

I'm sure plenty of times I've said "I flew from dia to bush".. or something like that. But If you throw in IAH, then it needs to be DEN.

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Denver is the only place on earth that gets pissy about this (this isn't just a you thing). It's so dumb with how awful everyone is at English to begin with.

Sort of an odd thing for it to transfer but with Stapleton fully closing one night and DIA opening the next day they were able to pull it off. Would have been much more troublesome had Stapleton remained open at all, even for a brief transition.

The worst abomination of airport abbreviations I've heard is one time my friend referred to IAH as "GBI" for George Bush Intercontinental. I was like... no. It's IAH or Bush.

No issues going from DEN to FRA to DBV last week.

Flew IAH to DEN recently. Flight took off, then turned around bc there was some mechanical issue. Had to deplane in Houston. I bought the next flight available (bc I wasn't going to play the United game of letting them find a flight for me), so I made it to Denver that night. My original flights didn't take off until 11:30am the next day. Not sure if anyone stayed around for the delay.

United's solution: $150 travel credit or 7500 points

Why the hell is it so expensive to fly to Seattle from Dallas right now? Or has it always been that way

Almost all flights are ridiculous right now.

Frequent flyers often experience worsening travel conditionsdelays, crowds, fees, etc. Our recent travel was delayed for 1 hour. It was frustrating since we came to the airport early just to avoid being late. We hadn't eaten dinner just to come early.

62strat said:

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To add to this post,
I had a 6am flight ICT-DEN on Mon 6/26, I woke up at 3 and noticed my text; flight canceled.
It said due to weather, but my plane was already in wichita, and there was absolutely no weather from Wichita to Denver that day. So I called BS

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I call BS on the fact that you didn't work a 7 Nation Army reference into your story.

The two exit rows on the right side of the plane have a 300 and 400 pounder, respectively. I'm heading out the left wing in case of emergency

HollywoodBQ said:

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62strat said:

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To add to this post,
I had a 6am flight ICT-DEN on Mon 6/26, I woke up at 3 and noticed my text; flight canceled.
It said due to weather, but my plane was already in wichita, and there was absolutely no weather from Wichita to Denver that day. So I called BS

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I call BS on the fact that you didn't work a 7 Nation Army reference into your story.

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lol.

With a wife from Wichita, that reference got played out about a year after it came out!

Cargo does not. It's why I gave up the "glory" of Pax flying for the steady paycheck for flying Rubber Dog poop out of HKG.

On most of my flights, 25% pays the bills.

Flew DFW-LHR and back within the last week. BA on the way over and AA on the way back. Both flights went off with no issues and very pleasant onboard service.

The problems I saw were at both airports. Not sure if it's understaffing or what, but the security screening at Heathrow was insane (even the fast pass line), and they were warning people to double and triple check to make sure that all liquids and large electronics were taken out of carry-on bags before sending through the x-ray. Said it was an hour and a half wait for manual screening if your bag got pulled. Sure enough, there was a crowd of very distressed people standing around after the metal detectors looking at a long table of piled up bags, waiting for some non-existent security staff to come do a manual search.

Back at DFW, the immigration hall was jam packed. I have Global Entry and breezed on through in about 2 minutes, but the other lines were snaked around every which way and people were coming unglued with the line handlers and with each other. It was a bad scene with people yelling about missing their connecting flights, etc.

wangus12 said:

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Why the hell is it so expensive to fly to Seattle from Dallas right now? Or has it always been that way

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i feel like it's always really expensive to fly to/from SEA in the summers.

SW 15 minutes late leaving Las Vegas Monday afternoon.