A regular View From The Wing reader tried to make a mad dash in Dallas to catch an earlier American Airlines connecting flight home. But when the airline’s mobile app wouldn’t let him add himself to the standby list he remembered American’s new rules that I’ve shared here.
American had an earlier flight. But they wouldn’t let him even try to get on it. It was scheduled to leave in less than 45 minutes, so he was out of luck.
I was about to make a mad dash to see if I could make this flight but then I remembered I have no status and the app wasn’t letting me list for standby.
But wait! The flight wasn’t going to leave in 45 minutes. The inbound aircraft was delayed, so the flight would be delayed by an hour. There would be plenty of time to stand by even under American’s new rules. However, in typical American practice that I’ve been highlighting for a decade they frequently do not bother updating departure delays until departure time passes.
To be sure, American could swap the aircraft with one that was on-time. This rarely happens so close to departure, where passengers for each plane are already at their respective gates. Instead, even when it’s obvious a flight will be delayed because the aircraft won’t be there to board the airline just doesn’t post the delay.
This does more than just cause passengers to waste time at the gate instead of getting food or working the lounge they’ve paid to join. It now keeps passengers from standing by on the flight, getting where they’re trying to go sooner.
In fact, American wound up cancelling this flight, so standby wouldn’t have helped. But the rules to remember are that:
- American Airlines is limiting free standby to members of the AAdvantage program, and requiring requests to be made via self-service channels for nearly all passengers.
- Self-serve requests via website or mobile app have to be done at least 45 minutes in advance.
- Platinum Pro, Executive Platinum, ConciergeKey or oneworld emerald members are the only ones that are allowed to be added to the standby list at the gate. They can do this until 15 minutes prior to departure.
Non-status program members also cannot stand by if they’ve already checked a bag. Golds and Platinums can stand by with a checked bag, but this must be requested via the app, and the app doesn’t allow standby with a checked bag. Catch 22!
American is looking for ‘quick wins’ for customers now – easy changes they can make that remove pain points and can show progress towards being a more customer-focused airline. And since this change was part of the Vasu Raja-era move to all-digital service, while forcing members to join AAdvantage, and Vasu was fired it seems like an easy policy to reverse (while just blaming the last guy).
And while they’re add it, they should make standby more customer-friendly, merely matching policies that United and Delta have in effect. When US Airways management took over a decade ago they restricted the ability of customers to stand by for connections that go through a different hub than the one on their ticket. That eliminated the usefulness of standby for many customers.
- What’s the use, to customers, of an airline the most and geographically-convenient hubs if they cannot use them?
- Taking flights off the board, when available seats are limited, makes standing by nearly impossible. And at a minimum it means waiting longer for flights.
- At many airports you won’t even find more than one flight a day to a given hub city, meaning standby is completely against the rules.
American Airlines should fix standby by reversing policy changes that make them uncompetitive and inconvenient for customers.