Talk to me about American Airlines

[jec6613]

LAX to PHL flights are the ones where they move equipment around to make sure they leave on time, and have priority over any other domestic AA flight at the PHL side. I'd definitely recommend a direct if you can.

Flight prices are another story. Warning: it's a bit lengthy. AA uses an IBM developed booking system called SABRE (Semi-Automated Business Research Environment, for the geeky types), which was spun off from AA in 2000. In 2015, Sabre's Travelocity was sold to Expedia, and from then on required a both a SABRE license to connect to the main reservation management system, as well as IBM connector licenses. Well, if you know anything about IBM pricing: it's extremely expensive, and Sabre wasn't far behind in pricing. With this huge increase in cost, the aggregators and price adjustors mostly disconnected from Sabre in 2015 and 2016, and with it being the largest travel booking platform in the world, the rapid adjustment of airline fares ended in all of the major carriers almost immediately after.

There are now two pricing schemes used on US domestic flights: fare buckets, and demand pricing. Demand pricing is used by the LCCs that don't offer premium cabins and service, while fare buckets are used by all of the airlines with a first class cabin. With fare buckets, the prices are determined 12 months ahead with a variety of fare codes with differing restrictions (pre-purchase, no changes, and minimum stay, usually), and as you get closer to the date of departure, these buckets fill up or become unavailable due to restrictions and you are moved to the next higher fare code. You can also choose to book into a higher fare bucket if you'd like: business and government travelers frequently do this, booking directly into full priced F, J, or Y fares, which offer included checked luggage, no change fees, and so on. These range from fairly cheap to exorbitant, depending on the route, with some routes such as JFK-LAX these fares are less expensive than flying any LCC, while on others such as BOS-JFK the cost is outrageous (this all comes down to pre-deregulation pricing schemes).

One upshot of the fare buckets over the last few years is that the median price paid for leisure travel has gone down, while airlines have kept the average per seat price almost identical.

Short version: book early in a fare you're comfortable paying, the chances of the price going down later are so slim as to be nonexistent, while the chances of it going up are 100%.

 

[writerguyfl]

Southwest does NOT overbook. They stopped that practice several years ago.

AngiTN is correct. Southwest does not purposely oversell but they do sometimes end up overbooked. As she notes, overbooking happens when a smaller plane gets substituted on a flight for operational reasons.

From the Southwest website:
Does Southwest overbook or oversell flights?
Southwest does not overbook as part of the selling process (Effective May 8, 2017). While we no longer “overbook” flights, there will be operational instances where we will be over available seating capacity resulting in an oversale. Operational instances that may create an oversale include weight restrictions and aircraft type changes.
Link: https://www.southwest.com/html/customer-service/faqs.html?clk=GFOOTER-CUSTOMER-FAQ

 

[crazymomof4]

OP, have you considered flying home from LAX instead of SNA? I know the driving time to the airport is probably double (60 minutes vs 30 minutes), but I'd rather spend that extra 30 minutes to get a nonstop home LAX-PHL. I'm guessing prices will be cheaper and mileage tickets at the lowest levels are probably more readily available.

I've only been to DL once, so I'm not an expert on traffic from DL to SNA/LAX....so if my estimates of 30 and 60 minutes are off I'm sure someone can correct me.

My uncle is a Disney Imagineer! (he is a retired Disney scenic artist but was called in in Nov 2018 to work on finishing up Galaxy's Edge for 6 mo at age 81!!) We will be staying with them and their home is just 10 mins from SNA (and an easy drive) but 45mins AT BEST from LAX. Also in addition to the drive times, my large family who all live in SoCal and are frequent travelers, told me with very busy LAX you can also tack on time waiting in line for security and time waiting in line for a clear runway for take-off (incoming flights it can be a similar wait for an open gate to deplane). They fly into and out of SNA. They laughingly said, "Only the tourists use LAX"

 

[jec6613]

AngiTN is correct. Southwest does not purposely oversell but they do sometimes end up overbooked. As she notes, overbooking happens when a smaller plane gets substituted on a flight for operational reasons.

From the Southwest website:
Does Southwest overbook or oversell flights?
Southwest does not overbook as part of the selling process (Effective May 8, 2017). While we no longer “overbook” flights, there will be operational instances where we will be over available seating capacity resulting in an oversale. Operational instances that may create an oversale include weight restrictions and aircraft type changes.
Link: https://www.southwest.com/html/customer-service/faqs.html?clk=GFOOTER-CUSTOMER-FAQ

Although this gives a warm fuzzy feeling, it's also a good business decision. Since WN is a LCC and flies primarily tourists, the number of no-shows is substantially lower than other airlines. Despite not overbooking, they still only ranked 9th out of the top 12 US airlines for involuntary denied boarding rates with 0.8 per 10,000 passengers, putting them among the worst, while AA ranked 4th at 0.54 per 10,000 passengers. The best is HA, by the way.

Following the UA incident in 2017, they dropped to 0.16 for AA and 0.18 for WN, by the way, so Southwest still comes out worse than American. HA is still the best.

 

[DebbieB]

I’ve flown American several times, as recently as last October. No major problems. Like the other legacy airlines, they book 330 days in advance. The downside to that is they make frequent schedule changes.

 

[writerguyfl]

Although this gives a warm fuzzy feeling, it's also a good business decision. Since WN is a LCC and flies primarily tourists, the number of no-shows is substantially lower than other airlines. Despite not overbooking, they still only ranked 9th out of the top 12 US airlines for involuntary denied boarding rates with 0.8 per 10,000 passengers, putting them among the worst, while AA ranked 4th at 0.54 per 10,000 passengers. The best is HA, by the way.

Following the UA incident in 2017, they dropped to 0.16 for AA and 0.18 for WN, by the way, so Southwest still comes out worse than American. HA is still the best.

Indeed. If you choose to avoid an airline over fears of denied boarding (which would be odd since it's so rare), Southwest should be on that list right near the top.

Personally, I don't think it's really that great of a business decision as much as it is the fact that Southwest is not as good at managing their inventory as someone like Delta or United. As you note, Hawaiian did have zero involuntary denied boardings (IDBs) out of 2,668,288 passengers during the first quarter of 2019.

Still, I think Delta deserves an honorary mention. Out of 41,503,395 passengers they only had 3 IDBs. That's despite the fact that Delta actively oversells their flights.

For anyone curious, Southwest had a whopping 1,594 IDBs out of 37,409,141 passengers. American (mainline only) had 1,724 out of 33,083,888 passengers.

Data source (pdf): https://www.transportation.gov/site...consumer-protection/341291/june-2019-atcr.pdf

 

[sethschroeder]

AA is the biggest airline in America,

AA is the world's largest but Southwest owns 20% to AA 15% of domestic travel. You are very unlikely to hear in the US about a Frenchman complaining about a flight from Paris to Madrid (just making up route). So while yes volume can make for more complainers they are not so much bigger that complaints should be out of line in comparison to Southwest. Difference is SW is typically a top 3 airline and AA is middle of the pack for rating.

 

[sethschroeder]

For anyone curious, Southwest had a whopping 1,594 IDBs out of 37,409,141 passengers. American (mainline only) had 1,724 out of 33,083,888 passengers.

Except you are truncating the facts.

Between Jan and Mar 2019 when flying American you had 28,362 voluntary and 1724 involuntary passengers out of 33,083,888. Southwest had 9996 voluntary and 1594 involuntary passengers out of 37,409,141. It's important to look at both because a bumped passenger is a bumped passenger regardless if they get paid off.

This also is a small snapshot as over the same time span in 2018 both airlines were vastly better with less than half of those numbers (AA was better in Q1 '18). Much of this comes from shifting away from the Max8 of which Southwest has/had the largest fleet in the world at 32 planes as of January which accounted for 8% of their capacity. (if I remember correctly)

Southwest was much more aggressive as of late with schedules to avoid a repeat of the first portion of this year.

I think Delta deserves an honorary mention. Out of 41,503,395 passengers they only had 3 IDBs.

Also again leaving out Delta is just more aggressive buying people off they actually had basically the same percentage of bumped passengers as AA and vastly more than Southwest. 28278 voluntary 1 involuntary and on 32.5m flyers.

One of the things not accounted for in these numbers is traveler makeup as families are less likely to take a buyout than a professional who can take the $500 voucher and expense a hotel to his company for the night for a delay. No clue on the breakdown of traveler type of airline.

 

[pixiedustedme]

LAX to PHL flights are the ones where they move equipment around to make sure they leave on time, and have priority over any other domestic AA flight at the PHL side. I'd definitely recommend a direct if you can.

Flight prices are another story. Warning: it's a bit lengthy. AA uses an IBM developed booking system called SABRE (Semi-Automated Business Research Environment, for the geeky types), which was spun off from AA in 2000. In 2015, Sabre's Travelocity was sold to Expedia, and from then on required a both a SABRE license to connect to the main reservation management system, as well as IBM connector licenses. Well, if you know anything about IBM pricing: it's extremely expensive, and Sabre wasn't far behind in pricing. With this huge increase in cost, the aggregators and price adjustors mostly disconnected from Sabre in 2015 and 2016, and with it being the largest travel booking platform in the world, the rapid adjustment of airline fares ended in all of the major carriers almost immediately after.

There are now two pricing schemes used on US domestic flights: fare buckets, and demand pricing. Demand pricing is used by the LCCs that don't offer premium cabins and service, while fare buckets are used by all of the airlines with a first class cabin. With fare buckets, the prices are determined 12 months ahead with a variety of fare codes with differing restrictions (pre-purchase, no changes, and minimum stay, usually), and as you get closer to the date of departure, these buckets fill up or become unavailable due to restrictions and you are moved to the next higher fare code. You can also choose to book into a higher fare bucket if you'd like: business and government travelers frequently do this, booking directly into full priced F, J, or Y fares, which offer included checked luggage, no change fees, and so on. These range from fairly cheap to exorbitant, depending on the route, with some routes such as JFK-LAX these fares are less expensive than flying any LCC, while on others such as BOS-JFK the cost is outrageous (this all comes down to pre-deregulation pricing schemes).

One upshot of the fare buckets over the last few years is that the median price paid for leisure travel has gone down, while airlines have kept the average per seat price almost identical.

Short version: book early in a fare you're comfortable paying, the chances of the price going down later are so slim as to be nonexistent, while the chances of it going up are 100%.

Thanks so much for this explanation. It explains perfectly what I've seen when booking via American. I had noticed that prices seemed to be lowest the earlier you could book: this explains why. It also explains the "there are x number of seats left at this price" terminology on their booking page.

One more positive note about American: I love how you can hold a flight (the exact price and seats) for free for 24 hours before deciding whether or not to book. I'm doing that now as I find out if we'll be able to take a holiday cruise this fall, and knowing that the potential flights are in place (without being committed to them) takes a lot of the stress out of the equation.

 

[jec6613]

One more positive note about American: I love how you can hold a flight (the exact price and seats) for free for 24 hours before deciding whether or not to book. I'm doing that now as I find out if we'll be able to take a holiday cruise this fall, and knowing that the potential flights are in place (without being committed to them) takes a lot of the stress out of the equation.

I do this almost every time I book. Since I do most of our flight booking (not the least of which because I have the fancy credit card that throws in travel insurance and discounts), I'll put it on hold, then pass out the itinerary to all concerned to make sure it's good before clicking purchase.

One of the things not accounted for in these numbers is traveler makeup as families are less likely to take a buyout than a professional who can take the $500 voucher and expense a hotel to his company for the night for a delay. No clue on the breakdown of traveler type of airline.

Airlines are very hush-hush on traveler types, but the market analysts believe that about 75-90% of business travel heads towards legacy airlines, given equal capacity on a given route, and almost all governmental traffic heads towards legacies.

But that being said, I've never heard of a volunteer out of a business traveler or heavy frequent flier. Even the entry level elite status at AA has a minimum of 50 hours in an airline seat per year, and it gets old fast. High tier frequent fliers have time that is more valuable than a $500 voucher. Actually, that's one of the perks of being Executive Platinum on AA: if you pay for a full fare Y ticket, they will bump somebody to put you on. And, yes, if you know what to look for, frequent fliers are easy to spot on an airport.

What does happen with business travelers is a lot of no-shows. They booked refundable, changeable tickets, so they'll get caught in a meeting, no-show the flight, and then rebook onto a later flight.

 

[sethschroeder]

But that being said, I've never heard of a volunteer out of a business traveler or heavy frequent flier. Even the entry level elite status at AA has a minimum of 50 hours in an airline seat per year, and it gets old fast. High tier frequent fliers have time that is more valuable than a $500 voucher.

To be clear I don't mean frequent travelers I meant a business traveler. I fly over 150 hours a year and I was even thinking about grabbing that $500 voucher if I didn't need to worry about an overnight and could just work from the airport.

My point was the person who only flys a couple times a year and can take the voucher and still charge their additional stay in the city to the company. I personally know many people who fall in to that category is why I brought it up. You are less likely as a personal travel give up a day of your vacation for that same amount of money.

No clue just my opinion based on what I have come across personally.

 

[crazymomof4]

ummm.... jumping in here to say....OMG! AAdvantage miles (points) system is so complicated! Like... why? I'm going to have to do research as to how this system works before I can book! I'm used to SW and there was no learning curve to using my Rapid Rewards points. Here's how many points you have. Here is how much each flight would cost you in points. Done!

 

[JimMIA]

ummm.... jumping in here to say....OMG! AAdvantage miles (points) system is so complicated! Like... why? I'm going to have to do research as to how this system works before I can book! I'm used to SW and there was no learning curve to using my Rapid Rewards points. Here's how many points you have. Here is how much each flight would cost you in points. Done!

That's the one thing I do NOT like about American these days. AAL's frequent flyer miles are not completely useless, but they're heading that way in a hurry. Miles tickets are limited, hard to book, and usually expensive in terms of value. I often find that I would rather pay for a ticket than use vastly devalued miles -- which is probably the reason they run the AAdvantage program the way they do.

As I said above, I canceled our main CitiAAdvantage card for this reason several years ago. We formerly used it for almost all family purchases, but now we use our Costco VISA for just about everything.

I use the remaining card only for personal stuff and my teenage daughter has it for an emergency card. The miles trickle in, but they are still only beginning to approach 60,000. I think when they get a little higher I'll use them and then cancel the card and get something better.

 

[writerguyfl]

Except you are truncating the facts.

Between Jan and Mar 2019 when flying American you had 28,362 voluntary and 1724 involuntary passengers out of 33,083,888. Southwest had 9996 voluntary and 1594 involuntary passengers out of 37,409,141. It's important to look at both because a bumped passenger is a bumped passenger regardless if they get paid off.

This also is a small snapshot as over the same time span in 2018 both airlines were vastly better with less than half of those numbers (AA was better in Q1 '18). Much of this comes from shifting away from the Max8 of which Southwest has/had the largest fleet in the world at 32 planes as of January which accounted for 8% of their capacity. (if I remember correctly)

Southwest was much more aggressive as of late with schedules to avoid a repeat of the first portion of this year.



Also again leaving out Delta is just more aggressive buying people off they actually had basically the same percentage of bumped passengers as AA and vastly more than Southwest. 28278 voluntary 1 involuntary and on 32.5m flyers.

One of the things not accounted for in these numbers is traveler makeup as families are less likely to take a buyout than a professional who can take the $500 voucher and expense a hotel to his company for the night for a delay. No clue on the breakdown of traveler type of airline.

No, I didn't truncate facts. Voluntary denied boarding isn't an issue because it's...voluntary.

 

[crazymomof4]

As I said above, I canceled our main CitiAAdvantage card......
I'll use them and then cancel the card

This afternoon I was thinking the same thing. We shall see. Maybe I'll feel different after the booking experience and the flight is over.

 

[crazymomof4]

I found this article and clicked on the link in the first paragraph. It took me to an AA search page that was way easier to navigate and understand than the one I had previously been pulling my hair out on.
https://viewfromthewing.boardingare...w-award-booking-tool-but-it-doesnt-help-much/

 

[sethschroeder]

No, I didn't truncate facts. Voluntary denied boarding isn't an issue because it's...voluntary.

You understand voluntary denied can just mean you got compensation right? Meaning they can dictate you can not board the plane and can either take the 2 round trip vouchers or $500 gift card or nothing, regardless you can't board. I think most people on this site are most worried about not making it to their final destination not a loophole to not count boarding denial.

Definition of involuntary denial of boarding:

The number and rate of involuntary denied boarding’s include both passengers who received denied boarding compensation and passengers who did not qualify for compensation because of one of the exceptions in the Oversales rule. There are four exceptions: 1) passenger accommodated on another flight scheduled to arrive within one hour of the original flight; 2) passenger fails to comply with ticketing, check-in or reconfirmation procedures; 3) aircraft of smaller capacity is substituted; and (4) passenger is denied boarding due to safety-related weight restrictions on an aircraft with 60 or fewer seats. Totals appear at the end of each table.

 

[zoo2tycoon]

We flew AA from Indiana to Miami for a cruise. Normally we fly SW. Flights were on time and everything went great. This was in May over Memorial Day weekend.

 

[jec6613]

You understand voluntary denied can just mean you got compensation right? Meaning they can dictate you can not board the plane and can either take the 2 round trip vouchers or $500 gift card or nothing, regardless you can't board. I think most people on this site are most worried about not making it to their final destination not a loophole to not count boarding denial.

Definition of involuntary denial of boarding:

What you said is the exact opposite of the quote you used: it includes passengers who received compensation and those who did not. Involuntary means that the airline chose you, voluntary means that you self-selected.

 

[jec6613]

ummm.... jumping in here to say....OMG! AAdvantage miles (points) system is so complicated! Like... why? I'm going to have to do research as to how this system works before I can book! I'm used to SW and there was no learning curve to using my Rapid Rewards points. Here's how many points you have. Here is how much each flight would cost you in points. Done!

The two worst parts of this are that it used to be much better, and the other legacy airlines got much worse, first, so there isn't a lot of choice. It's still the best awards system out there in terms of earning power and points usage, but it used to be by a country mile and now it feels like it's only winner because it's the least cruddy choice, and a lot of that is because you can redeem on any OneWorld flight (and trust me, the best place to use a quarter million miles is a lie flat on a 20+ hour itinerary).

That said, I have used miles just last month, but it wasn't very easy to find a decent flight with J/F award availability.