American, Canceled

I am getting pretty fed up with American Airlines. Yesterday, Dad was supposed to fly out from St. Louis to San Francisco. When he arrived at the airport they informed him that the flight had been canceled. There was no call to him beforehand that this would happen. The earliest they offered to get him out was tonight. So he missed one of the four days he is going to have with his newest grandson and west coast family.

Earlier this year as Mom, Dad, and I were flying back to San Francisco from Maui through Los Angeles we had a similar problem. We flew the red eye to LA and had an two hour layover. As we were sitting there at the gate we saw on the monitor that the gate had changed. Then in a few minutes the flight was canceled. They made no announcement over the speaker, just waited for the mob of angry people to go to the other gate. Of course everyone still wants to get to SFO, but there are no other American flights that can hold that many people. After a very tense few hours we did get them to put us on a Frontier flight from another terminal, that we barley had enough time to get to, and go through security. Of course our bags did not make it with us.

It is bad enough the way they cancel flights with no warning, and no replacement flight. But what really gets my goat is the contempt with which they treat those inconvenienced. They act surprised that you still want to travel to the same destination. Of course there are not enough seats on other flights to carry a full plane load of people. They make no attempt to contact those whose flight no longer exists.

I don't have these problems with Southwest, or any other airline I use. I cannot remember what else I was angry about, but in LA I recounted a litany of previous problems.

I am to the point that I will spend quite a bit more on other airlines to avoid American Airlines.