A laughable response from AA customer service
A laughable response from AA customer service
On August 12, 2016, AA flight 152 from Washington, DC (DCA) to Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) was diverted to Austin due to the inclement weather in the Dallas area. We remained in the tarmac for five hours. Two hours into the diversion (tarmac) the crew ran out of drinking water and we were limited to juices and alcohol (first class).
I contacted American Airlines and cited the Department of Transportation regulation and stating how they were clearly violating same. A few weeks back AA gave me 25,000 miles for the inconvenience after I sent them a nasty rant for ignoring my initial complaint.
Today, however, I received another response from someone at AA. Read an excerpt of the email below.
As you know, in this instance your flight, Flight 152, landed in Austin at 5:32pm. The flight parked at a remote location due to the limited number of gates available. According to the station, air stairs were brought to the aircraft at 7:50pm; however, we were not able to conclude that an announcement was made advising passengers of the opportunity to deplane remotely. It appears that the station personnel were of the impression that no passengers wanted to deplane, so they left the aircraft to attend to other diverted aircraft. Our records indicate passengers commenced deplaning at 10:24pm via air stairs and were transported to the terminal by shuttle. We realize this situation resulted in an extended tarmac delay for this flight and understand this was a frustrating situation.
What a false disregard for our complaint. No one was allowed to leave. No announcement was EVER made. I guess we should have opened the doors ourselves? lol. In fact, the air stairs didn’t arrive until 10pm when a woman called 9-1-1 and falsely claimed to be experiencing blood pressure issues. So their time-frame is totally incorrect and misleading. It seems as if American is trying to save their asses from another hefty fine from the DOT for violating the tarmac-max rule.
Have you had a similar experience on American?
Feature image: Courtesy of Wikipedia
343 of my brothers died on 9/11. You are whinning about being stuck on a plane! I. Sorry but I call bullshit on your timing. You were on the tarmac and the airport tower would have know you were there and would have been working with the airline to get you off the aircraft. As far as the individual who dialed 911 (note the phone number and not the date you used) having made a false call would have had legal action brought against them for utilizing 911 for a personal gain and making a false report. I find everything you have written to be questionable. In the future I suggest you keep to the facts and don’t you dare utter 9/11 for you own pittyfull goals again.
First and foremost, I’m sorry to hear that you had “343 brothers” die on 9/11. I had 2,996 fellow Americans murdered and thousands more wounded. Second, I’m sure you complain about plenty in your daily routine so you can shove your “suggestion” up your ass because your comment was utterly rude. Third, as you probably know, if you have common sense that is, using “9/11” instead of “9-1-1” was a mistake, and I’m sure you make plenty of those as well. If you don’t like what you heard, too bad, don’t read my blog again. I don’t give three fucks. And, sure, you can call bullshit because you’re entitled to being ignorant (which I already gathered after your third sentence), but I was actually there and know what we experienced. Furthermore, the lady aboard the plane did not make a false report, she called 9-1-1 and alleged a medical condition which was laughed at by many passengers but would be nearly impossible to prove as a lie. With that said, enjoy the upcoming week!
That’s “Pitiful” – not your Mr. T “I pity the fool” spelling. I’ve also had friends and family who have passed serving our country in times of war. Apples and oranges don’t mix. Those people choose to put themselves into life threatening situations as part of their jobs. Adam and I were just victims of airport and airline crew failures, as well as flight-tower communications breakdown (which was also largely to blame for the 9/11 tragedy, so I guess that’s your best comparison of an orange and apple event). Yes, I was on that same flight. So let’s all curb the holier-than-thou speech for another forum. As passengers of flights within the domestic USA you have rights protected by the DOT and FAA. This flight’s crew plainly and simply violated the law and put people’s lives at risk (more on that in a moment), and I encourage anyone else who was on this flight to file a DOT/FAA complaint as I did here: http://airconsumer.dot.gov/escomplaint/ConsumerForm.cfm
They also publish a handy list of contacts to whom you can complain directly at the airline: http://airconsumer.dot.gov/publications/contacts.doc
There was an announcement to deplane right as we landed in Austin, and most thought we would be taking off again in less than an hour, so no one approached. I personally DID ask to deplane after the 2 hour mark passed and was told there were not enough buses to assist with deplaning on the tarmac. A woman passed out 2.5 hours into our delay on the tarmac as the Austin airport could not locate enough air movers in the 90+ degree heat. So once someone was overcome with heat exhaustion, the crew was able to call an ambulance, meaning at least first responders were [selectively] available to some of the flights on the ground. Please contact me offline as I’d like to discuss a joint effort to ensure that others aren’t put in harm’s way by American’s own admittance of this crew’s ineptness in the future. Not exactly a Sully movie-moment, but sure would be nice for all of American’s personnel to be trained in proper handling of FAA emergency procedures. I could have driven back to Dallas in the time it took for them to hold us hostage, only to claim “no harm no foul, sorry for your discomfort” and not even offer a future flight voucher. Haven’t flown AA since.
But they will go ahead and over charge you for going over on your data keeping up with the storm way to go Verizon