American Airlines is undoing a negative policy change that it implemented last year, as part of its effort to become more customer friendly.
Continue reading: Good: American Restores Airport Standby For All Passengers
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Other than trying to avoid irregular operations, which often isn't an issue until near flight time, I've never seen value in standby. Normally you have to wait to the end of boarding, the seat you end up in is a crapshoot and you may be forced to check your bag. And if you're in a premium cabin that's not where you're going to end.
Might be worth it for a short leg like CLT/RDU or DCA/LGA where being jammed into 24E is a no big thing.
That is a huge improvement. On the ground, I saw agents refuse to list me for standby. Even as Executive Platinum.
Hard disagree. A successful standby can turn a 2 1/2 layover into a 15 minute layover. This is what _would_ have happened to me if the new process had been in place last year.
Still salty over being refused while a plane took off with empty seats.
Looks like AA is backtracking on a lot of negative changes they made over the past years. One can only hope they continue doing so to improve on customer service. Going for GrAAT again.
Most airlines out there either prohibit standby or restrict it to very specific fares. As the people running them aren't stupid, there must be a sound commercial reason for that.
Some of these 'customer-friendly' policies that the US carriers seem to like can have important hidden and/or opportunity costs, the classic example being the 'no change fee' policy which can result in airlines flying one or more empty business class seats halfway across the world after a customer found a better last-minute fare with a competitor. Make no mistake, that cost goes into the price of the ticket and it benefits some passengers (namely corporate travellers) at the expense of others (premium leisure pax).
Ditto on the disagree---was just able as a Gold to jump the standby queue on ORD-DTW with 3 flights going in 4 hours with IRROPS and other delays abounding. Was able to get on the earlier delayed flight rather than our scheduled one.
What did the idiots expect? As soon as I read about it I marked them off my list.
This will make commuter pilots and flight attendants a nightmare trying to get to world or fly home!
AA goes extra effort to shackle their employee's. Do they not anticipate bad ideas?
American is in business to take care of passengers and their needs, they are not there to get you back and forth to work because YOU choose to live away from your base city and you are responsible to get back ka and forth on your own.
American is in business to take care of passengers and their needs, they are not there to get you back and forth to work because YOU choose to live away from your base city and you are responsible to get back ka and forth on your own.
Still a loooong... way to go. And as long as these monitors won't have returned to the seat backs, improvement will remain an exercise in futility. Even in domestic first, taking out your own device is a hassle which makes you less comfortable, I'd rather not imagine what it must be like in 35B.
On one hand, sure, great.
On the other hand, dilutes the benefits of status a little more.
A couple years ago (before the initial change) we got off a cruise ship in Miami and were somehow at the MIA airport less than a half hour later. We had a 10:00am flight to MCO but there was one leaving about 8:30am. The guy working the AA ticket counter was able to put us on the standby list and even escorted us to the front of the TSA Pre-Check line, sending us to the gate of the earlier flight. We watched the earlier flight board and then they called us up to say we had cleared. Cost AA nothing but gained a ton of goodwill.
Now about those seatback entertainment screens.
This is up to agent discretion and time permitting . If they are busy and you arrive during boarding , they may not add you . Specially when only one is working with he flight , or two are working an international flight , because there are multiple issues that come up during boarding with passengers already on the flight