Every year, I rank the major US airlines based on our experiences with them over the past year. Of the major carriers, American has consistently been slipping downward, even falling below United, which we refused to fly with for several years. The airline wasn’t off to a good start after they stranded me in Las Vegas, leaving me to book a last-minute flight with Spirit in order to get home.
But now American is risking falling even lower in my rankings after my experience cancelling an award flight.
Unwinding an award trip
We were planning on taking a Mediterranean cruise with Virgin Voyages this fall. Unfortunately, we had to postpone that trip, which meant canceling our return flight from Barcelona to Orlando via Miami. Since I booked our flights two months ago, we’ve already had two changes to our flight times, with the most recent one putting our connecting flight in risk of misconnecting. Since I was now looking to cancel the flight anyway, which would refund the miles and taxes, the time changes didn’t matter to me.
However, when I went to cancel the flight, I received an error message.
I waited for two days to see if the message had changed but received the same message every time. I even tried canceling the flight with the American Airlines app, but that also took me to a webpage with the same message.
Contacting American Airlines
I recently tried calling American Airlines to get a refund on the last flight that I canceled, but I had to wait three hours to speak to a representative. Not wanting to repeat that experience, I tried chatting with a representative using the American Airlines app.
While the wait wasn’t three hours. The estimated wait was 45 minutes to one hour.
In fact, it took over an hour for a representative to join the chat. I had to refresh the app several times to avoid losing my place in line.
Once a rep connected with me, canceling my award flight was straightforward. I was a bit surprised when I was told I’d receive the points back within 24-48 hours, but the taxes could take 7-20 business days to be refunded to my credit card.
Final thought
Once I contacted a representative from American Airlines, either on the phone or via online chat, they were pleasant and able to fix the problem. However, the wait to speak to someone is unacceptable. There’s no way that you’re always experiencing over 1 to 3-hour waits. If so, that’s not a high call volume; it’s understaffing for the number of calls or chat requests you receive.
In both instances, the only reason I had to contact American Airlines was that their website and app were unable to complete my request. If an airline’s IT is so broken that I have to contact them to complete the simplest task, that’s the airline’s fault, not the employees’. Remember that the next time you need to call or chat with an airline representative.
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