Low staff morale, very poor service (American Airlines)

Member Name: dfranklin1

Product:	American Airlines
Date:	24/07/09 (16 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Used to be good; trades on past glories

Disadvantages: Doesn't seem to be able to get a single flight off on time

Hmm, difficult one for me this. I used to be a big fan of AA, having flown direct Heathrow to Manhattan with them in late 2007. That flight was a real pleasure - on time, pleasant cabin crew, modern airliner. Then in summer 2008 myself and a bunch of pals took them from Stansted to the US on a road tour, going first to St Louis to visit relatives and eventually flying out of LA after a three week drive across the country. The outgoing flight was delayed by around four hours, meaning we got the later flight to La Guardia new york rather than JFK new york. Which meant we missed our connecting AA flight to St Louis. And finding we had to transport ourselves, overland, from La Guardia to JFK for the later St Louis flight. The counter staff were incredibly abrupt, rude and unhelpful and told me we'd have to make our own way across New York City, at our own expense! I protested strongly and eventually convinced them that it was the airline's error and they did grudgingly pay a cab (although we paid the cabby his tip). Then the return leg was another hellish experience, even worse. Flight out of LAX was five hours on the tarmac due to some unexplained technical malfunction. Stuck in the plane's cabin - older plane with the TV screens not working and baking in July heat with the aircon seemingly also not working. Took off late at night - got in late the next morning to JFK to find, inevitably, that we'd missed our connecting flight to Heathrow (not Stansted this time). With flights from the US there's a window, due to UK noise restrictions, meaning that if you miss the last morning flight you have to wait all day until the first evening one. Which was at 8pm. Which gave us a day to kill in New York - bit too shattered to enjoy sunny Manhattan though. After much badgering, and thanks to one decent individual (Dave?) at JFK airport we managed to secure meal vouchers and a biz class upgrade, which was nice - but that took an awful lot of badgering to an awful lot of people. The word on the street says morale at AA has gone right down the pan since the credit crunch and lots of redundancies, which I guess explains the total lack of morale amongst the staff.

Summary: Avoid.