American Airlines is finally testing a program to give passengers more honest updates during rolling delays, starting in Charlotte. It's about time.
Mitch McConnelled it indeed. well put - better late than never, but goddamn is it late
dinosaurs you say...I'm more interested in getting rid of pedophiles. one wonders why you are not.
Except maybe to the intellectually challenged, the two are not mutually exclusive.
I don't see why they need to "trial" this. It cannot be that hard update software to delay a flight if it's going to arrive at the gate 5 minutes before it's scheduled to take off.
It's not difficult, and an update isn't needed. It's not done now because the agents honestly don't know what will happen. What IS needed is more responsible and rapid decision-making coming out of the Ops Center. Too often, they're as changeable as the weather because the higher-ups always question the very experienced and talented people they've put in charge to run the airline! Too much middle management scared for their jobs will do that to an airline.
I don’t know man - they are so dumb that I lost hope .
For instance - in April , BOS-ORD(overnight)-YYC , we got diverted due to bad weather in Chicago to Cincinnati where overnighted and got rebooked with an agent to 5:00am flight that arrives in ORD at 5:50am . After arrival in ORD and checked in the Admiral's club for the 10:00am flight to YYC we got rebooked an hour later for the next day due to missed connection. AA didn’t know that AA rebooked us on 5am flight , AA didn’t know that we boarded and arrived in ORD at 5:50am for 10:00am departure , nor knew we entered Admirals club with the BPs for the 10:00am flight (family of three ). Thankfully, an hour before boarding , the lounge agent was able to fix the nonsense .
I can’t help but wonder how someone that dumb is not jobless or bankrupt ..
Reactive managment instead of proactive managment… This is what AA has been doing, and unfortunately that still hasn’t changed yet.
Are the other airlines like Delta and United doing this? It's quite angering rushing to the gate at LAX because the display and app shows an on-time departure only to learn the inbound aircraft is still over the Grand Canyon.
United fixed this a long time ago, because they've offered inbound aircraft status for many years now. It's a bad look to show the inbound aircraft in the app, but still list an impossible departure time so they significantly improved delay updates to at least be in the realm of possibility.
As an example, if your flight leaves at 1pm, but the inbound aircraft is delayed and won't land until 3pm, United would typically update the departure time to something like 3:30pm. In all likelihood the final departure time will be more like 4:15pm and they tweak the timing as it gets closer, but you at least then know you can safely stay in the lounge until ~3pm.
Honestly they are the worst! I experienced this with AA a few weeks ago where my ORD-DFW flight kept getting rolling delays every 30 min for over 3 hours. I couldn’t rebook as I checked bags and wanted to ensure I started with them. I saw the flight was delayed again but this time for an hour so I decided to go back up to the lounge for a bit and wait - then they decided to leave 20 min later and depart early and never contacted me once! The app didn’t even notify me! In the end not only did I wait for nearly 4 hours but they left without me and took my bags! Americ*nt at its finest!
Unless and until there are real incentives (or financial penalties), companies will not prioritize operational reliability.
We are past due to implement meaningful air passenger rights legislation in the US that includes a duty of care, compensation, and rebooking (even with competitors) in the US.
EU and UK 261 shows the way. Peer-reviewed empirical evidence shows that it does improve reliability, doesn’t bankrupt airlines or skyrocket fares (see Ryanair). Travel insurance alone isn’t enough. We deserve better. Perhaps a new Congress and administration will finally protect consumers.
Such legislation is a genuine and powerful incentive for airlines to avoid cancellations or delays wherever possible and to proactively rebook, even on other carriers. I recently had a flight with Swiss, from London to South Africa, connecting through Zurich. The short-haul leg was cancelled and by the time I got my checked luggage back, I had an email from Swiss confirming me on a direct flight on BA the same evening. Swiss clearly wanted to avoid paying the EU compensation, so did whatever they had to do to get me to my destination within the window allowed before the compensation is triggered.
You're lucky because when you start asking for EU261 compensation, Swiss is VICIOUS. US small claim courts won't get involved in foreign legislation. On other Swiss faults (including Swissair), I scored a 100% success over 4 claims and 20 years.
They need to figure out when a late flight is coming into the hub they have a gate / it seems when you are late they never realize you are coming and compound the delay by not having a gate to use even when you can look at the window and see gates open
Sometimes the acft doesn't fit the jet way at the gate, or they don't have tow equipment for that type acft at that gate. Always a potential problem when an airline uses 20 different kinds of airplanes!
Well hold on a second; we can't complain about all the gate changes in one breath and then complain why they don't use a different arrival gate in the next breath. Gate changes suck, yes - they are complex and confusing for many. And I would support the fact that, when needed, they can and should be coordinated further in advance, but at a major hub with multiple terminals it's extra hard. Not impossible, but difficult to pull off smoothly.
You will still see it with summer weather. AA can't really predict when the thunderstorms will end and the airport will reopen for activity. The rolling delays discourage passengers from wandering around the airport once boarding commences and there may be another cell on the way so the gate agent wants to get the flight boarded and on it's way.
AA has gotten better at maintenance. Not posting endless 15 minute delays when maintenance had advised it will take at least two hours to fix a problem.
"Hi, we are delayed until the weather clears. It could be 10 minutes or 2 hours. Don't stray more than 15 minutes from the gate or you'll risk missing the fight when we eventually start boarding."
Infinitely better than what airlines do now.
This might be a fair excuse...except other airlines don't do this and manage to avoid issues with tons of passengers missing flights.
United doesn't do the 20 minute rolling delay thing and yet they send out full flights even in delays. Also, that's not a fair excuse for rolling delays due to maintenance problems or other issues that delay the inbound aircraft. Rolling delays will always happen in bad weather - that's fine. But don't do 20 minute delays when the inbound plan hasn't even departed the airport it's coming from.
Welcomed news. Shame it took so long. It can be incredibly frustrating.
what amazes me about aa is when my flight is scheduled to depart late afternoon, say around 4:30pm, but early in the morning around 6am, i get an email telling me my flight will be delayed. i think to myself - ok, they have 10 hours to figure this out, no ops team could be this inefficient. but then at 4:30pm departure time - yep, flight delayed to 5pm, then 5:30, then 6pm, then 6:30, then 7pm. finally at 7pm they find an aircraft, which, when you check its flight details, had actually landed earlier that day at 1pm (and no, this wasn't the aircraft originally scheduled for the 4:30 flight). so i ask myself: when did they realize they could use this aircraft? and didn't it occur to anyone that they could've used a same-type aircraft scheduled to fly at 5, 5:30, 6, or 6:30, and cut down the delay for everyone involved?
and to add insult to injury is when the app says aircraft is at the gate or boarding and u leave the lounge only to stand around at the gate for the next 2 hours because they do the next 20mins BS.
Probably took that long to find a replacement crew that wouldn't time out on the outbound taxi. The system usually has 3 different routings that have to coincide with each other to get an on time departure: acft, pilots, and fly attendants. When things start to fall apart, the first thing they try to do is get the 2 halves of the crews and acft together. Personally, I think that should be done ALL the time.
Whenever there’s a rolling delay I check flightaware, it provides more reliable information than the app (it’s currently actively misleading) and the gate agents.
Skytrax #4 most improved airline for 2026!!! If they keep working hard like this maybe in 2027 they can dethrone EgyptAir for #1 most improved. Fingers crossed!
Next AA needs to fix the endless multiple gate changes at DFW that have you perpetually going from terminal to terminal with the mad dash right up to the last minute.
This is such an infrequent traveler grandma problem lol. Sit your ass down anywhere. Don’t even look at the gate assignment until 15 minutes prior to boarding. Why the hell would you be running around the airport?
Absolutely, why chase the gates around? But I guess that is the same people in group 9 that crowd the gate area waiting to board before even concierge key is called.
They may be secretly doing this elsewhere. Thursday I was on standby for a BWI-ORD flight to get me home four hours early. Naturally the plane was flying ORD-BWI, and naturally there was weather in Chicago. Instead of a rolling delay, they slapped a two-hour delay on the flip trip that I was on standby for. Leave it to my luck to be at an airport with no Admirals Club. In a very timely fashion (roughly an hour from boarding), it became a three-hour delay and was posted with an explanation. All said, I got home an hour early instead of four hours and gave up an F upgrade. However, if they'd done the rolling delay BS, I would have gone bonkers. So credit to AA.
They have a long way to go, but at least they're trying. Got an update from American last night at 8:29 PM PST that weather in Chicago could impact my flight the next morning. It had been widely reported on weather sites storms were rolling in for at least 12 hours before that. Getting a notice after its too late to switch flights the night before is fairly useless. Fortunately, a colleague flying United gave me a heads up and I switched to an evening flight before the storm hit.
This is definitely an area where United has been leading for a while now. Storm notifications can occur days in advance depending on when weather models are solidifying around a specific type of weather impact. And while they aren't perfect, for a long time now they have updated departure times to at least be after the inbound flight is set to land. This is partially out of necessity because they've long offered the ability to see the inbound flight status, so if passengers know in your own app that the inbound flight isn't arriving before a certain time, you definitely need to update the departure time to something within the bounds of reality.
Oh shame I enjoyed calling their system ImaginAAry Time
Suggestion: stop referring to AA as a collective whole implementing these positive changes. Refer to Nat Pieper or Heather Garboden to craft the more accurate narrative.
The biggest snarl here is that sometimes the airline will change aircraft for the flight. For example, they might cancel another flight outright (say your inbound aircraft is coming from NYC, NYC is hosed due to weather, and your crew isn't on the inbound flight - a later NYC flight might get canned and you get the plane that was going to NYC).
This can lead not only to the departure time moving back up, but to a major last-minute gate move (this has happened to me at MIA, ATL, and JFK).
The other thing that is an issue at AA is that I nominally had a waiver to switch a flight going through MIA during the crash investigation, but I would have had to pay the fare difference. By the time the evening flight was actually delayed, I basically had no same-day options.
Related to that, AA doesn't give options with a forced overnight (or to swap destinations) , which would let me at least get out of ATL and plop myself at DFW/ORD/MIA/NYC/PHL/DCA for a morning flight without an inbound stupid o'clock flight. I probably prefer not to get stuck somewhere, but if I'm going to be stuck I'd like more control over where. Also, depending on where I'm going, I can plausibly get a lot closer and then use my TI to patch the final leg if all else fails.