How did American Airlines thank U.S. taxpayers for generous payroll support that saved the jobs of every domestic employee during the pandemic? By further eroding consumer protections for delays and cancellations in its latest revision to the contract of carriage.
American Airlines Updates Contract Of Carriage, Further Eroding Consumer Protections
As first noticed by JT Genter, the American Airlines contract of carriage has been updated. Three key changes are in place:
- If American Airlines or a partners cancels your flight and AA decides it is too expensive to get you to your final destinations, it can simply refund your money and leave you stranded.
- American Airlines will no longer “rebook you on the next flight with available seats” in case of a missed connection, but instead “on the next American Airlines or American partner flight with available seats.” Practically, this has already been the policy in place: good luck getting American to rebook you on another airline in case of delay or cancellation.
- American Airlines will never reimburse you for hotel expenses, even if they are incurred due to a delay or cancellation wholly within the control of American Airlines. Your options are to wait in line at the airport for an AA-issued hotel voucher (if an agent is willing to issue you one), receive written authorization to book your own room (not going to happen), or you can pay for it yourself…but no refunds.
On the one hand, these changes are hardly surprising because this already has been the pattern and practice of many AA agents. Then again, to disavow the obligation of helping passengers reach their final destination strikes me as a very Spirit Airlines-like move.
Think about the implications. Let’s say you are flying on American Airlines from New York to Los Angeles and it cancels your flight. Rather than rebooking you on JetBlue, Delta, or United, American Airlines can just say refund your ticket and wash its hands. If you booked your ticket well in advance, good luck booking on another airline at the same price, not to mention the time lost and the stress.
The idea that consumers should have to stand in line for hours at the airport to wait for hotel and meal vouchers because AA’s app is not powerful enough to issue them represents such contempt and disrespect for passengers.
CONCLUSION
Once again, folks, I believe we need a certain baseline of consumer protections in the United States. If an airline cancels your flight, stranding you should not be an option – not when airlines take tremendous advantage of taxpayer-funded infrastructure as well as direct subsidies via a host of programs. If an airline cancels your flight, you should not have to fight for a hotel voucher and a meal voucher not even sufficient for a hearty meal.
American’s latest changes to its contract of carriage show utter hostility for customers. Meanwhile, CEO Doug Parker still received $10.66 million in total compensation in the midst of the pandemic.
If you are interested, you can see the specific updates to AA’s Contact of Carriage below.
This week, @americanair changed its Conditions of Carriage. These changes strip away rights travelers may expect when flying AA.
Here’s a thread of the changes:
1. AA disclaims any liability when “we (or our partners) cancel a flight or route” pic.twitter.com/kcb8JdI6bV— JT Genter (@JTGenter) September 5, 2021
2. If AA “or our airline partner fails to operate or delays your arrival more than 4 hours, our sole obligation is to refund the remaining ticket value and any optional fees according to our involuntary refunds policy.”
So, AA may strand you on the day of travel. pic.twitter.com/NQ86vzEz5j
— JT Genter (@JTGenter) September 5, 2021
3. When there’s a flight cancellation or delay that causes a missed connection, AA will no longer “rebook you on the next flight with available seats”.
Instead, you’ll have to wait to be rebooked “on the next American Airlines or American partner flight with available seats” pic.twitter.com/J0elz5UWVH
— JT Genter (@JTGenter) September 5, 2021
4. If AA strands you somewhere *and it’s their fault*, AA will only cover the cost of a hotel if it’s an approved hotel or you get “written authorization from American Airlines”.
So, make sure to stay in the (long) airport line to get a hotel when AA strands you. pic.twitter.com/3aIUQPVajj
— JT Genter (@JTGenter) September 5, 2021
5. Even worse, AA then emphasizes in the next section that if “you book your own arrangements without written authorization from American Airlines, you’re responsible to pay for your hotel, meals and other expenses”. pic.twitter.com/J8rymzYbXq
— JT Genter (@JTGenter) September 5, 2021
(H/T: View From The Wing)
Maybe someone can explain why American would not put passengers on another airline (keeping the fare to pay United etc) rather than paying hotels, meals etc and still having to transport you to your destination. This could be days during peak travel periods for a AA flight to have open seats.
Because than AA loses the control of the passenger and the passenger gets to see how other airlines treat people. Parker must have had some incredible upbringing to explain his behavior. He has been totally and completely self-centered from his early days at Usairways. Text book Narcissist.
Mommy dearest?! Independent Board of Directors?! Are you kidding me?!
@John C.
American is under no obligation to rebook you at all under the new policy, only issue you a refund.
So, how do we get this elevated beyond an individual blogger’s website or even BoardingArea to national news?
Changes 2 and 3 are bad enough. But the implications of change 1 are so bad that you’d have to be an utter fool to buy a ticket from AA.
Imagine getting to DFW on a connecting ticket as a major storm hits. Now it’s going to be a ton of work to rebook all those people. So instead AA just refunds everyone the unused portion of their fare and calls it a day. But that’s not as bad as it could get.
What about arriving in an international city on a connecting itinerary only to find your flight cancelled and AA has now stranded you with only a partial refund in mid transit.
Again you’d have to be a fool to subject yourself to that kind of uncertainty.
@ Matthew — Sounds like their main competitor is now Spirit.
@Jim F
Airlines are completely in the pocket of Congress. Nothing can change change. Congress is completely broken.
Who DOESN’T have Congress in their pockets? Very brief discussion. The fact that Congress didn’t limit executive compensation when doling out $Billions to firms like AA confirms that in spades. Congress is only broken from the taxpayer’s perspective. Not those on the receiving end … Like themselves!
@rjb
I guess you don’t know how the order of words matter. But “Congress is completely in the pocket of airlines” is the logical conclusion from reading the news. What you said doesn’t make any sense.
Get this elevated to the news.
As long as the airlines receive tax dollars, they have no reason to be competitive. Ever shrinking leg room, additional charges for carry on, the changes to consumer protection are all done by companies who do not care for customer loyalty
This demonstrates how desperately the US needs to copy EC261 to provide consumer protections.
(Being an EU Citizen and living there) reading this incredulously I agree with you and I must say that I value the EU for things like EC261 – despite some room for improvement in other regards.
How does it go with ec261?
The public needs to send AA a message and it needs to be with their wallet. It would only take a few weeks of empty planes for AA and their share holders to get the message. Why would anyone buy a AA Ticket?
AA has completed it’s race to the bottom. They have become the worst airline of the US Big 3.
One thing to highlight from your first sentence is taxpayers (involuntary) provided payroll support that saved the jobs of every domestic employee. This didn’t actually help the airlines. Why would airlines, shareholders, and their management show gratitude to taxpayers when their support was for the jobs of of flight attendants and airport staff during a time when they weren’t needed and not for running the airline? This payroll support did nothing to mitigate the billions in costs of airport fees and in payments for plane leases and loans. Airlines were forced to run unprofitable empty flights as part of the payroll support for airline workers. I don’t excuse management for cuts that make the experience worse and might hurt the brand but I’m not going to blame them under this false point.
And how did the average American take out restaurant like Domino’s, PJ’s and many more “Thank” the government? By having record years because of the lockdowns while getting their payroll covered. What to dig deeper? Look at the independents who hired every friend and relative they knew as “employees” for a 50/50 split of the money. And of course no oversight. Want more, look up the PPP money that went to your zip code, easy search. So many people created new “businesses” and got $10,000.
The fraud is everywhere, why single out the airlines who actually followed the rules? Blame the politicians in both parties who overreacted without oversight.
I wonder what happens to GSA contract tickets. FY2022 contracts have probably just been awarded.
Oh golly whither American Airlines? When I was a kid, my father was a frequent AA customer. and he was invited to join the Admirals Club (it was invitation only back then). As a teenager I was provided my own Admirals Club card and was a regular on the American DTW-LGA route (they called it the “Flagship Express.” ) to and from boarding school in Connecticut. The service on American out of DTW and LGA was top-notch; we could pre-order entrees and such. Beautiful Boeing 727-200s. I can also remember the AA 747-100 with the piano lounge in coach! The good old days gone forever.