American Airlines reportedly has plans to improve how it handles rolling delays, which are probably the most frustrating types of delays that passengers can endure. I’m simultaneously delighted that this is happening, and angry that it took executives at the airline until the year 2026 to say “gee, maybe let’s try to ever-so-slightly respect the time of our customers.”
American trialing new handling of rolling delays
Flight delays are of course frustrating, but they can happen for a variety of reasons, many of which are outside the control of airlines, given the complexities of aviation. What’s most infuriating about delays is when airlines do a poor job communicating with and empowering customers during delays. There are a few things that can make a delay experience exponentially less frustrating:
- It’s nice when airlines make an effort to be accurate with how long a delay will be ahead of time (to the best of their ability), so that customers can adjust their schedules accordingly, rather than just being huddled at the gate
- It’s helpful when airlines are transparent about the reasons for delays, so that passengers can make their own decisions as to how they’d like to proceed
- It’s also valuable when airlines make it easy for passengers to control their own travels by being able to easily rebook via the app or website
These are areas where American has largely been improving in recent times. American’s app and website now share why flights are delayed. American has also gotten better with its self rebooking capabilities for passengers.
Arguably one major point of frustration has continued to be a lack of honesty during rolling delays about when a flight will actually depart. That brings us to the latest news shared by the always in-the-loop JonNYC, who reports that American finally has a plan to address rolling delays.
The idea is that American will actually try to be more realistic during rolling delays with giving passengers a sense of when a flight will depart. The program will reportedly be piloted in Charlotte (CLT), and will hopefully expand throughout the system in due course.
For so long, so many of us have used things like Flightradar24, or even the inbound flight information, to estimate when a flight would actually depart, rather than just relying on what the airline tells us. After all, if your inbound aircraft hasn’t even landed, it’s literally impossible for boarding to start, no matter what the airline’s flight status page says.
American is improving, and that’s great and terrible
American is making meaningful improvements at the moment, and clearly realizes that you can’t treat customers like self loading freight without it impacting the bottom line in the long run. So it’s great to see the pace at which American is improving, and more accurately, narrowing the gap with the competition.
But in the same way, these improvements are also so infuriating. The same very senior executives who’ve Mitch McConnelled it through the past decade while enriching themselves are now the ones making these changes, years after competitors.
For how many years have American frequent flyers complained about the carrier’s abhorrent delay handling? And somehow it’s only now that they’re like “yeah, maybe we should look into fixing that?” Like I said, I’m delighted to see the changes, but this is precisely why the very top of American’s management chain has lost the respect of customers and employees. You can’t burn the house down and then say “hey, look at the beautiful home we’re now building!”
Anyway, I’ll stop beating my dead horse. Kudos to everyone, except ISO/R and (in the past) PAR/D.
Bottom line
American Airlines is reportedly working on a program to improve the handling of rolling delays, and it’s expected to be trialed in Charlotte in the near future. Handling of rolling delays has long been a disaster at the airline, so I’m happy to see this.
Credit to the people working on turning things around at American. It’s just a shame that things had to get this bad, and that American can’t have a visionary leader who can start an actual turnaround of the company’s culture.
What do you make of American’s focus on the handling of rolling delays?
Mitch McConnelled it indeed. well put - better late than never, but goddamn is it late