UnAmerican Airlines

Un-American airlines

#AmericanAirlines

American Airlines has been my default airline for years.  I have flown over 700,000 miles with them.  I have circumnavigated the globe with them.   I fly them frankly because I have no other choice.  Their customer service is abysmal. 

I wanted to share this with folks who maybe don’t fly much with AA, so that you understand that, even for us frequent fliers, the experience is pretty poor.   I actually wrote this entry below right when AA filed for bankruptcy, but I decided not to post it because it’s not very nice to kick someone when they are down.  Well I can say now, as of December 2013, that despite the New AA Marketing Facelift, nothing has changed.   The experience below (plus some recent ones that I will be posting about) is still the status quo:

You are in a 747 Boeing which is about the size of a very a large suburban home in Minneapolis. But it’s pretty small when carrying about 500 hundred passengers.   As a result, AA has to get creative in how they dole out services to different ticket classes.

American Airlines wants to generate profit (and why shouldn’t they?), so the best way to do this is to create as many classes as possible, but without providing many more services in return.  Because you are in a flying metal suburban home flying across the Atlantic Ocean, AA is limited in the types of services/goods that they can provide you with.   This has generated a couple of bizarre American Airlines policies.  A few examples:

Example 1: The Difference between First Class & Business Class

For example, in Business Class and above, we are fed a 4 course meal which is kind of ironic because it was all prepared 3 hours ago before the plane even left the terminal.  It’s not really fresh, just warmed slightly.

However, the best part of the meal is the ice cream.    Depending on the route you are flying, there is only Business Class.  For longer flights, they have both Business Class and First Class.   In both classes, they service ice cream.   However in order to generate a hierarchy, they have to come up with a way to add extra flourishes to the ice cream in First Class.  How do they do it?  They serve you peanuts.  Yup, you get a custom made ice cream sundae where you can ask for peanuts and hot-fudge.  

I was perfunctorily informed by my flight attendant (she wasn’t rude, just doing her job) that I was not entitled to peanuts & hot-fudge on my ice cream –unless I was in First Class.  So I started to do the math on what more I would have to pay for this additional service.  Sure, there are other amenities in First Class that I may have access to.  The big amenities are the leg room and bed situation but that is already perfectly acceptable in Business Class. 

However, the part that I VALUED was the custom made ice-cream sundae.   The full-fare Business class ticket for a European flight to say JFK is about $5,000.  The First Class fare is about  double that, so $10,000.  I already get the Sundae in my $5,000 ticket which sometimes comes with hot-fudge pre-congealed in the bowl.  That means I’m paying an extra $5,000 for nuts (plus a person putting the nuts on the sundae).

Example 2: The Difference between Business Class & Economy Class 

This is when it gets interesting.  I do a lot of flying on the Asia Airlines (Cathy Pacific , Singapore Airlines, and Korean Air).   These airlines are the best in the business.   They cost no more than American Airlines. They are the example of what happens when service is the biggest priority.  I think that I had been spoiled because though I was flying Economy, the flight attendants provided me with not one, but three pillows for the flight.  

Now, let’s compare this to the same extra pillow request that I made to an AA flight attendant on the flight from Delhi (or was it Bangalore?) to Chicago last year.   I should probably mention that at this point, I had been an Executive Platinum member with American Airlines for at least 3 years.  So you would think, that MAYBE, I’m a valued customer?

I asked for an extra pillow.  The stewardess attending to the Economy Class informed me that each passenger in Economy Class was only entitled to one (1) pillow.   Did she notice that I was pregnant?   The disappointing part was that while she was following the airline policy, she did not notice that there was a pillow that had been crammed between the seats behind her that was unclaimed.    My fellow passenger noticed this and gave me his pillow as a courtesy.  J