Not upto standard (American Airlines)

Member Name: tangoman84

Product:	American Airlines
Date:	25/10/09 (11 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Excellent staff, fairly comfortable seating, good in flight service, flights ran to time overall

Disadvantages: Issues with landings losing 2 of the stars and the other star off is just lack of excellence

OK so let me start by being up front here in the fact it is quite some years since I flew with American Airlines but I still remember the experience with them and I wanted to share what I had gone through with them.
I was flying over to see my family for the second time who stay in Mississippi and was flying out from Glasgow so I already knew what to expect through my dealings with Northwest Airlines...or so I thought. The start of the experience was all pleasant enough with helpful check in staff and a simple process for checking in causing me no real delays and I was handed my ticket with my seat number shown. I headed through to the boarding gate on time and was shown exactly where my seat was when I got on board the plane on time so was happy all was going well and was greeted with a seat which offered up the same level of comfort I have come to expect with enough leg room to allow you some level of comfort but in my opinion this could be so much better.
My journey was going to see me taking a total of 3 flights to get to Florida (we were staying here for a week and then driving down to meet up with my family) and so settled in for what we knew was going to be a long flight. The staff were all excellent, friendly and helpful during all parts of the flight and offered up a good in flight service with the meals offered not amazing but passable.
All sounds ok so far doesn't it? Well this is true but when coming in to land at my first destination we found ourselves circling for a very long time over the airport and wondering what was going on only to be told that there was an issue with the landing gear sticking so they had to burn off more fuel and keep trying the landing gear...this went on for about 30 minutes before they managed to have a successful descent and landing. We put this down to an unlucky experience and thought things could only get better but when during the second flight we had yet more landing issues when the pilot missed the runway and landed part of the wheels on the grass we were left somewhat shocked and felt a lack of confidence in the airline. The rest of the flight experience throughout was ok but not amazing but these two incidents would have been enough to put many off flying and whilst this was not the case for us it did put us off flying with American Airlines again.

Positives:

- Friendly and helpful staff
- Reasonably well priced
- Flights ran to time on the whole in my experience
- Fairly comfortable staff
- Good in flight drinks and snacks service

Negatives:

- Landing issues experienced
- No apologies offered for the issues experienced on either flight during landing

Overall not an experience I want to have to go through again simply due to the fact the landings felt so lacking in being routine as with other airlines.

Summary: Not what you hope for with a big name