American Airlines deserves a lot of the criticism that it receives, because there’s no denying that there are many areas where the airline falls short.
Well, my algorithm knows what I like, so I just came across an Instagram post from a Boston based content creator with around 180K followers, ranting about his experience flying with American. The video’s description — “Id rather fly out of Baghdad on a Hot Air Balloon than deal with this bull*hit again” — caught my attention.
Unfortunately upon actually watching the video, I found this to be one of the most unreasonable complaints against the airline that I’ve possibly ever seen. The thing is, he acknowledges that he’s a rookie traveler and asks others for feedback on his experience, so let me share my take, because he seems like a nice enough guy…
“The worst flight experience of my life on American Airlines”
The traveler in question was flying from Palm Springs (PSP) to Dallas (DFW) to Boston (BOS) on American, and as he opens the roughly three-minute video, he explains “I’m pretty sure I had one of the worst flight experiences I could possibly have over the course of one’s traveling life,” and “this is my first time flying American Airlines, I’d rather walk to where I’m trying to go, I swear to God.”
Yowzers, that sounds like a really bad experience. What exactly happened? To summarize (and I’m removing the constant expletives as much as possible, but there’s one in most sentences):
- The flight from Palm Springs to Dallas “wasn’t that bad,” but he does mention “on the takeoff, I’m pretty sure the pilot was like, ‘let me just hit every single possible pocket or air on planet earth that I possibly can in the atmosphere’”
- The real “horror show” began when he got to Dallas; while in the air, they had already delayed the flight by around 45 minutes, as it was initially supposed to leave at 6:30PM, but then was delayed to 7:15PM
- When he got on the plane, “nothing is happening,” and “we might’ve like crawled or rolled to somewhere on the tarmac or runway, and then we’re just sitting there”
- “I’m not exaggerating, an hour into sitting there on the tarmac runway doing nothing, the captain gets on the thing and is like ‘hey, we’re holding up because of some thunderstorm thing or whatever, and there’s four planes in front of us and there’s three rows of planes, and we have no idea when we’re going to take off’”
- “Why even put people on the plane, you had to already know there was going to be some kind of a delay, what’s the point of making everyone sit on the plane? It had to be like 77 and humid, just the worst”
- “Long story short we’re sitting there for around two hours, and I’m in the middle exit row, so the seat is like way out here, I can’t even put my phone in the little thing, and watch some sh*t or whatever”
- “Real kick in the balls with this whole thing is we were on the plane for two hours on the runway before it took off, the flight attendants they don’t come out until, it’s a four hour flight, 2.5 hours into the flight, to give us warm orange juice and some pretzels”
- “Spirit Airlines doesn’t run this sh*tty from what I understand”
- “Like, is American Airlines always like this? People always messaging me they’re the Walmart of airlines, they suck, it’s just a joke they even exist at this point, it sounds like”
You can see the video for yourself below (though there’s a lot of bad language, so view at your own discretion, if that offends you).
Respectfully, that was a really baseless rant
Before I share my take on this, let me emphasize that the guy mentions he’s a rookie traveler, and he claims he’s fascinated by this, and genuinely wants to understand how stuff like this can happen. This is a situation where I can explain (and justify) everything, so let’s go through this.
First, there are two points that aren’t really worth addressing:
- Sorry it was bumpy out of Palm Springs, but I can assure you that’s not something the pilot was seeking out
- Most people would be happy to be assigned a seat in the exit row for the extra legroom, so sorry that you had so much legroom that the entertainment device holder was so far away, but I’m guessing anyone in another middle seat with virtually no legroom would’ve been happy to trade with you
Next, let’s talk about the alleged timeline for a second:
- The traveler claims his flight was supposed to depart at 6:30PM, was delayed by 45 minutes before boarding even started, and then was delayed a further two hours once onboard the plane
- The issue is that Flightradar24 doesn’t lie; the flight he was on was scheduled to depart at 7:15PM and arrive at 12:04AM, yet the plane actually took off at 8:52PM and landed at 1:14AM
- So the plane took off 1hr48min after the scheduled departure time (representing a delay of maybe 90 minutes at most, since you expect taxi takes at least 20 minutes), and he arrives only 70 minutes behind schedule
- The flight was never delayed from 6:30PM until 7:15PM, and I think he might be confused about the boarding time vs. departure time?
- Regarding the drink service, the flight was in the air for 3hr22min, so if they only started serving drinks 2hr30min into the flight, it sounds like they only started service shortly before the descent started; though I have a hard time believing this guy’s timeline on anything when he insists he’s “not exaggerating,” but factually, we know he is
Lastly, let’s talk about his issue with why airlines board everyone on a plane, and then just sit there, because surely they know there’s going to be a delay:
- I get it, delays absolutely suck, and it’s so frustrating to sit on the tarmac and not know when you’re going to depart
- The issue is that DFW dealt with a massive thunderstorm last night, and a vast majority of flights were delayed by well over an hour; for safety reasons, the airport can’t allow departures when thunderstorms are within a certain distance of the airport
- So why not leave everyone in the terminal until it’s time to go, to avoid this frustration? Well, operations can often resume from one second to the next, while it would take around an hour to board everyone, push back, taxi to the runway, etc., so you can’t just wait until everyone is ready to go
- The added issue is that when there’s weather in the area, airspace is further restricted, and air traffic control has traffic management systems, and that can also evolve rapidly
So other than the temperature of the orange juice (they should have ice cubes) and the allegation that the drink service took too long, I think American did absolutely nothing wrong here (and as OMAAT readers can attest to, I’m no American apologist). The same situation would’ve happened on any other airline.
If this experience is to the level where you’d rather take a hot air balloon out of Baghdad or walk, then I’d recommend you pursue those options. Because this comes nowhere close to being one of the worst experiences one could “possibly have over the course of one’s traveling life.” That’s just my two cents, at least.
Bottom line
American Airlines does a lot of things wrong, but a mild delay (in the scheme of things) during a thunderstorm at DFW doesn’t rank on the list, and certainly wouldn’t be the thing that makes me want to instead take a hot air balloon out of Baghdad. But maybe that’s just me.
Air travel can be frustrating, and that’s largely because we’re not in control, and we don’t understand why certain things happen. So hopefully this is useful for anyone who finds themselves in a similar situation…
What do you make of this American rant?