Cost-Cutting Chaos: New American Airlines Standby Rules and IT Glitches Leave Loyal Flyers Stranded

People are getting stuck in airports for no good reason at all – because the airline thinks it lowers their costs, but by becoming less efficient and burning customer goodwill they’re actually both driving up expenses and costing themselves revenue.In fact, if you ‘add bags’ on the app even when not checking in, you lose the ability to same-day standby for another flight. This cannot be removed from your reservation once added (I’ve not heard of any success in doing so via an agent). That means you would need to request standby at the gate, but for most members this is not allowed.

American Airlines allows their Gold and Platinum frequent flyers to stand by for a flight, even if they’ve checked bags. But they’ve programmed their systems not to allow it, and they won’t allow agents to do it for them any longer to save money. And they haven’t communicated any of this to customers.Since current US Airways management took over, standby policies have been broken. They’ve been more focused on making sure customers don’t get a good deal with standby, potentially saving money, than on making sure customers get where they’re going. And they’re far less generous than Delta and United here.

In addition to not being able to seek an agent’s help to get on a different flight, passengers still have to follow their original routing. There may be plenty of space to get home through another hub, but outside of irregular operations, they can’t use it. Travel to or from a city with only one flight to the hub you’re ticketed through? You cannot standby or use same day confirmed change at all.That undermines the entire value to the customer in having the largest domestic network and all those hubs.

American Airlines is not providing the tech tools to allow for self-service, and telling customers their only option is self-service. Gate agents can no longer do what they used to do for customers. That wastes passenger time, keeps them from getting home early and even on-time – suffering through delays unnecessarily – and keeps American from running an efficient operation moving passengers along and freeing up seats to get other people where they’re going or even seats to sell.

Meanwhile, same day standby was taken away from customers entirely when traveling on corporate PNRs back on March 1. Their primary message to investors over the past two months has been that they’re trying to make amends for walking away from travel agents and business travel. I asked whether this policy will be rolled back, but have not received a response.