After another passenger vomited on a man sitting in first class on an American Airlines flight to Miami, AA responded with a canned note that did not address the situation or offer any compensation for what occurred.
American Airlines Responds To Passenger After Another Passenger Vomited on Him
Last month, a man boarded American Airlines flight 1174 from Philadelphia (PHL) to Miami (MIA) and staggered to his seat in the back. He appeared either sick or intoxicated, but this was not noticed by the over-worked gate agent (American Airlines has reduced gate agent staffing in a bid to cut costs).
Onboard, the man vomited in the lavatory. As he was being led off the airplane by a member of ground staff, he vomited again all over a first class passenger sitting in seat 2B.
The man wrote to American Airlines outlined what occurred and received this response:
Thank you for reaching out to us here in Customer Relations. I’m sorry to hear of your recent experience on board your flight to Miami.
Our employees strive to provide all of our customers with a safe and pleasant flying experience. In any public gathering, there may be occasions when conflict arises between people or when one individual’s actions bother another. We want to respect everyone’s rights, and we try to ensure you are not subjected to uncomfortable situations by other customers. For that reason, our flight attendants are instructed not to serve alcoholic beverages to any customer who appears to be intoxicated. In the face of any serious disturbance, our crews are trained to diffuse potentially volatile situations so as to ensure the safety and well-being of all our customers and crew members.
The comments that you shared with me today will be made available to our leadership team for further review and will be used to refine and update our practices. We want our customer journey to be the best in the industry, and we thank you for giving us the opportunity to drive change.
XXXXXX, from all of us at American Airlines we appreciate your loyalty since XXXX and we look forward to offering you a better experience aboard your next flight with us.
Having spoken to customer service agents at United Airlines about the volume of correspondence they must deal with, I have to imagine American Airlines is no different (and perhaps even worse, based upon its higher volume of flights and operational issues).
It is no doubt extremely difficult to hand tailor responses to every particular situation without creating a backlog months long.
And yet the response above is totally unsatisfying. It does not address the issue or the fact that the man vomited on him, at least in part, because an American Airlines agent was guiding him off the plane.
While technically not American Airlines’s fault (they served him no alcohol and it is not always possible to visually ascertain if someone is sick), American Airlines led him off the airplane and vomit is not generally considered a first class amenity one seeks out by flying AA.
Perhaps compensation was not even necessary (I tend to think it would have been a nice gesture to a long-time elite member who frequently buys first class tickets), but a nice note would surely have been nice.
CONCLUSION
A personalized note goes a long way, and would have greatly helped to show that American Airlines cared about what happened to the man. Instead, he received a canned response that was not worth the time it took to auto-generate it. Perhaps agents should instead just spend their time generating miles or vouchers instead of notes that do not even address what occurred onboard…
(H/T: View From The Wing // image: BriYYZ)
What they didn’t tell you was the guy vomited because he was sick of ACTUALLY flying AA. This had nothing to do with alcohol anyways!! Hell, I’ve always felt sick and kinda wanted to puke the last time I flew AA anyways!!
Good help is hard to find. The person selecting what to write is incompetent…they should receive a pay increase because of this. That’s how some think.
I can’t stop laughing: “…vomit is not generally considered a first class amenity one seeks out by flying AA.”
Wow, apparently AA employs thoughtless robots in it’s customer service department. Perhaps it’s just a Russian bot doing the job. Nothing tells a customer that you couldn’t give a crap about them like responding with the closest fitting form letter that doesn’t actually fit at all.
AA keeps reminding me of why I fled to UA about 10 years ago.
“Window or Aisle?”
“Puke or No Puke?”
Based on the response, I wonder if a human actually was involved in this. You make a valid point that all airlines are dealing with complaint volume. I suspect AA might be using one of the many automated tools to read these and provide a canned response.
Agree that AA should have “thrown up” a few points to this writer (victim) as a good faith effort to support a good customer.
From what I gather from the past several weeks here, OMAAT, View from the Wing etc… The noral story is, if you want to avoid BS incidents like this, just avoid AA on MIA altogether
What’s missing here is “local empowerment,” meaning the FA or gate agent should have taken down the customer’s name/ FF details and on the spot say we are sorry about this and we are going to add 15 or 20K Miles to the customer’s account. Happened to me on a BA flight (long haul…oh joy. Fortunately I had a change of shirt and before I landed at LHR (from SEA), BA had deposited 20K Avios points..because they had empowered the local staff and on board team sent out a message before we’d even pushed back. This kind of action has a better impact than some proforma note later. Yes, you are relying on your local team to make good decisions..but isn’t that why you hired them in the first place?
Inebriant AA CEO Doug Parker likely vomits after his frequent bouts of intoxication, so one can’t expect much sympathy from customer relations.
Put a different way, this would have been a great opportunity for AA to go the extra step in customer service. Imagine if they offered to escort him to the Flagship First lounge and compensated him for his clothing (or even just the dry cleaning). Very little expense for a much better service offering that this passenger might remember more favorably.
I don’t see the point. I don’t get why AA owes anything. AA didn’t vomit on the guy. If I go to a doctor/movie/flower store and a patron vomits on me I don’t turn to the store and say ‘you owe me.’ That’s just ridiculous. Take it a step further: a guy with COVID sneezes in me. Does AA owe me anything? No, they don’t.
What a pointless non-reply by AA.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” – Theodore Roosevelt
True, it’s not AA’s fault. But how about just a gesture of good faith? I mean, for a multi-billion dollar corporation, is it really going to break the bank to throw the poor bastard some miles? Maybe a flight voucher? Anything but a boilerplate response that could be used for any service related issue.
LOL I had something similar happen once. Someone vomited near me so I wrote in. I chose the “claims” dept, which was a mistake. Got some hard @ss lawyer on me. Should’ve just written to CS and gotten some miles… Altho, based on this story, I wouldn’t get my hopes up.