We were told the flight was delayed 5 times, then it was moved to the next day.
To start, I’d like to say that every American Airline personnel I interacted with on the ground, especially flight crew, was very friendly and did their best to help me out. Despite this, however, my experience with the airline was an entire mess. The 7:19 PM flight was heavily delayed due to weather, and pushed to 10:30 AM the next morning. Because of this, I had to spend the night inside of the airport. At some point later in the night, I got an email saying that the flight had been canceled. I called the support number, and the representative on the other line told me that the flight was still on and that I didn’t need to rebook. The next morning, no one came to the gate to open the door for the crew until almost 11 AM. By this time the flight crew had been waiting for over an hour, and they had called management to get someone to open the door for them multiple times. Around 11:30, the gate screen had changed to a different flight. I ended up buying a last minute ticket with Southwest airline just to get to Chicago, because the next flight with American wasn’t until 7:19 pm that day. Now, earlier that morning my suitcase had been sent ahead of me to ORD. I went to baggage claim to ask them if I could have my suitcase forwarded to where I was staying. The representative at SDF baggage claim said they could and put the claim in for me. As I was going back through TSA, I got an email that the airline had found my suitcase, but the next step was to send it BACK to SDF. I called the airline support number again, and I made it clear that my suitcase needed to stay in Chicago and to not come back to SDF. The representative told me that they would hold my suitcase at ORD and that it wasn’t going to be forwarded anywhere. Once I got there, I found that they had loaded my suitcase onto a plane to send it back to SDF. Thankfully, I had gotten to the baggage claim counter in time for them to put in a request to bring my suitcase back up. My refund with the airline is processing already, but because of this entire experience and miscommunication at every turn of the way, I will not book with American Airlines in the future.
The American flight was a connecting flight to an international flight. The international flight has a 2 check bag rule. Despite being informed of this, American would only check 1 bag and wanted 100 to check the second (basically a 3rd carry-on) to NYC. Subsequently tsa took a sealed container of maple syrup and a few other things that couldn't be in carry-on plus I had to lug around 3 pieces of luggage for the entire trip. The American reservation was made with the international and American actually checked the one piece the entire way to China. This is one of the reasons that I will avoid American airlines if possible in the future.
WiFi connected but only let you go to the AA website, not even text messaging worked.
I had purchased a ticket that allowed one check bag yet I was still charged for my bag! the lady at the ticket counter was rude and condescending.
Crew was rude and the flight is not comfortable for long haul.
Boarding was efficient. On board drink was slow. Temperature was a bit warm in the beginning.
heat was on full blast. It was like the Tropics inside the plan.
I have lost my items and I didn't receive good customer service
I fly to Japan for work a lot and this is the first time I've ever had a crew not hand out customs forms. I had to spend a ton of time filling out paperwork after landing. When I'm on JAL, they give you the paperwork 2 hours before landing. If I'm traveling for 18 hours the LEAST you can do is help me save some time. My American legs home are also awful. Fly Delta or JAL. American is terrible for international flights.
