We’ve seen some major airline meltdowns over time, most recently with United Airlines, which canceled thousands of flights prior to the July 4th holiday. The meltdowns are typically initially caused by some sort of weather event, and then get significantly worse due to airlines not having the technology required to recover, in terms of scheduling…
Continue reading: American Airlines’ HEAT Tool Prevents Flight Cancellations
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.
I have a vague recollection of AA claiming they would never lose money in 2017
Some context here - AA flies ~6,700 daily flights or ~2.4 million in one year. So out of 2.4 million flights in a year (who knows how many cancelations or potential cancelations), this system saved 1,000. Or an average of <3 flights per day out of 6,700. Big deal.
When everyone complains about cancelations and weather delays just ask yourself if you think AA and other airlines should cut corners for simplicity and convenience like the Titan sub did.
Well, Lucky… *Untied* Airlines? Sure reminds me of that parody website, untied.com…
I think the central problem is that the system is taxed and overloaded so that when weather, particularly summer weather which is far more unpredictable, comes in recovery becomes difficult. Planes are packed to begin with, airplanes end up not being able to get to a gate even when the weather passes and crews easily time out. There's a price to be paid with 90% load factors. They might financially benefit the airline but there's far less operational flexibility and software can only go so far.
One reason I switched from UA to AA years ago (20+ Years as a 1K and GS at times) was the inability of UA to deal with weather events that did not result in flight cancels all the time. I can count on one hand the number of AA mainline flight cancels I've had in 20 years of flying them as a secondary then primary airline. AA tending to bank flights within a hub (DFW flights rarely cross hubs: meaning a DFW-SAN-DFW aircraft and crew will work in/out of DFW - UA on the other hand had abysmal usage of crews/aircraft in some cases going MCO-EWR-SAN-ORD - meaning if ORD had NO weather but EWR did - there was a good chance the SAN-ORD flight would get cancelled - neither origin or dest affected by weather)
Yes you may be delayed, yes you may get in way late but AA will most likely operate a flight vs cancelling as quick as UA does. When UA would cancel at peak travel times, even being a 1K or GS meant the replacement flights were less than ideal.
Kudos on AA
Nice try - look here: https://flightaware.com/live/cancelled/
You will see even on poor WX days, AA is rarely cancelling flights - delays - YES, but compared to UA, DL and WN they cancel rarely - part of this is because they have operated flights/crews focused on specific hubs, unlike UA who will during the day have an aircraft originating in one WX prone hub need to end up later in the day to another hub.
20+ years for me as AA secondary and then primary airline and less than 4 cancellations EVER - that was one year on UA each time I flew them
Thing is - I'd rather my flight being cancelled rather than having to wait 6-8 hours for a delayed flight with zero information and 10 minutes rolling departure updates. That happened to me twice in the last 2 years (and I rarely fly AA, for that particular reason - my blood pressure can't take it). Or at least, give people a realistic departure time instead of this 10-15 minutes rolling BS. They only do that so they don't have to cancel a flight, impacting their statistics.
That’s the silliest thing I’ve heard someone say in awhile. You sir deserve a participation award.
HAHAHAHAHA! This is the airline that routinely can't seem to keep track of where its incoming crew are and therefore has no idea what to tell delayed passengers about when their flight will depart.
Yeah, AA, good luck with your HEAT. Maybe you should try implementing the WTFIMP (Where The F Is My Pilot?) tool first
My thought as well - an average of three flights per day isn’t much when you are the world’s largest airline.
That was just Dougie on another one of his drunk rants.... but he was indeed dumb enough to publicly claim it to media:
https://chiefexecutive.net/american-airlines-will-never-lose-money-says-ceo-doug-parker/
So basically nothing…
A COOL name can make even a turd appetising at least on a menu…
Agree I would rather have the flight canceled than waiting with no updates or short time delays that turn into a long one. And also would say this is the cost of doing business for the airline