Questions and Answers

A recent flight from Cozumel, MX to Charlotte was deferred to Miami because the crew had too many in-flight hours. After departing an hour later than scheduled, we had to deplane in Miami, go through customs, and get back in the plane. This was a lengthy process; a flight that was to have landed in NC at 6:40 got in 4 hours late. All connections to EWK, JFK, and ORD were long gone. Why couldn’t we have stayed on the plane and simply changed crew? Isn’t that sometimes done?
A side note: because we have Global Entry, we got thru customs in time to rebook on a direct Miami-to-Newark flight. We figured this out on our own. Why wasn’t the airline proactive enough to provide options for everyone on that flight whose final destination was not Charlotte? They had plenty of time – probably 3 hours- to address the problem. In fact, there was no information provided to the passengers at all; whatever we knew we learned via the Internet. A bad situation was made worse by incompetence and indifference.

“A bad situation was made worse by incompetence and indifference.”

You might have answered your own question… see Ben’s recent articles about the state of affairs at AA.

The plane thing though, they do have to disembark people from an international flight and then reboard them. I believe the plane has to be processed after an international arrival.

Couldn’t agree more that the situation was made worse by incompetence and indifference.

However, to play devil’s advocate for a second, I’d much rather be “stuck” fending for my own options to get back home in a major hub airport like Miami, than waiting in Cozumel where the majority of the staff are maybe contract workers, there aren’t as many options, etc.