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American Airlines Leaves Thousands of Passengers at Gates as It Pushes On-Time Departures

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Pilots at American Airlines said the airline is so committed to making sure airplanes take off on time that in February it left 20,000 passengers stranded at the gate as the door to the airplane closed. The number was provided to American pilots Thursday in a letter from Dan Carey, president of the Allied Pilots Association.... (www.aviationfigures.com) More...

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gillyscotland
Gillian Ellis 4
United are a great airline to travel with but there is a huge problem with gates closing early. With a planned flight I contacted the airline as I was concerned about a 55 minute layover and was told I would have plenty off time to catch my next flight but off course despite landing on time, I got to my gate and found it had closed 20 mins early. Resulting in having to travel via Brussels and case going awol, not a pleasurable experience at all.
Highflyer1950
Highflyer1950 2
Just as a matter of interest, were you on a domestic flight connecting to an international flight? Domestic flights generally close the flight off at either :10 or :30 prior to departure, depending on the airline. International check-in usually closes 1:00 prior to departure.
md69
I paid the price for my insistence of the timing between AA flights last year. I was due to fly MAN - PHL - IND and return but the IND - PHL leg only had a 55 min turnaround. Knowing that route and the terminals used I argued that 55 minutes wasn't enough (I've done the route twice previously so speak from experience) so they begrudgingly changed the IND - PHL leg for me. However, when they went to reconfirm the flights, I ended up with MAN - ORD - IND on the way in and IND - PHL (with a longer layover) - MAN return. It then happened that the IND - PHL flight timings were changed so that they were fairly close to the original!

AA further screwed up when I turned up to check-in for the MAN - ORD leg. The inbound from ORD was running 3 hours late and they denied me boarding because, in their words, "you won't make the ORD - IND flight you're booked on and the other 2 flights today are full. It's a bit strange that so many people want to fly to Indianapolis." I replied "perhaps they're going for the same reason as me: to see the Indy 500"... So in their infinite wisdom, they booked me on the following day's MAN - JFK flight and onwards to Indy.

Cue delay compensation from AA (which itself is another story TL;DR). But the upside is that with the transportation vouchers I got from AA (and my wife too), we're now flying MAN - LHR - LAX - SFO - PHL - MAN free of charge with some vouchers still left over!
bstilp
Ben Stilp 2
Fucking happened to me on American Airlines was late departing Los Angeles to Miami where I needed to make a connection and instead sat on the tarmac for 30 minutes for American Airlines figured out how to operate the jet bridge. As a result I had to dash to make my connection which left the gate right as I got there. I felt kind of pissed because the Airline could've simply contacted the gates to say I was on my way. I fly on status and I was Z class. I ended up having to overnights on Christmas Eve instead of being with my family.
yr2012
matt jensen 2
It used to be a rule that min connecting time btwn carriers was 90 min and 60 min for same carrier. At I&C if you didn't have that 90 min you were pretty much screwed. Two hour checkins for domestic and three hours for international is what we've always used as a guideline. Most international carriers close off their waiting rooms 45 min before departure, so if you're not there, you're not getting on board.
jdriskell
Nothing is too good for the paying passenger, and that's what they get!
MD114
Paul Thorne 1
Simple question.Why do peope arrive late and miss their 'plane ? Something is surely wrong somewhere when so many people missed their flights.This is not good PR for American even though they may push back on time!
tjperez927
Tony Perez 4
Connecting flight was late?

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