American Airlines 4+

“Chicken or pasta”, my server asked. It was an inauspicious start but when the silver-grey platter fit for royalty was placed in front of me, I felt myself transported to paradise. specifically, paradise that could have only been from a very small region in Tuscany - from which this reviewer’s ancestors hail - where the chicken or pasta is prepared following millennia old traditions, using the finest countryside ingredients. My main complaint was that the portions were enormous. After all the palette of even the most adventurous fine diner needs a respite from the veritable tidal waves of San Marzano tomatoes upon perfectly al dente penne, and avalanches of balsamic vinegarette atop the greenest of leafy greens. I also felt that the sous-chef may have taken some liberties in the preparation of the bread and the flavors were almost - but not quite - too boldly Italian. However, these slight blemishes on an otherwise otherworldly experience were soon forgiven and forgotten when I bit into an Aztec cinnamon bar prepared by Sofia herself. The woman, the myth, the legend (and owner) of Sweet Sofia’s Bakery. A bakery that has toiled against the odds, and sacrificed profit for the sake of moral purity by selling only to American Airlines.

If you create an app that takes reservations, allow the user to go to another window on their iPhone to look and collect other information while not omitting the whole reservation that one has already inputted. I switched over to another window to look up my girlfriends tsa number, went back to the AA app, and boom. All my inputted info for my reservation was gone. Back to step one. So I go back to my credit section(because I have a flight credit), and the site allows me to book from my trip credit page. It even says trip credit at the top of the app as I’m booking my flight(for the second time). I fill everything out again, get to the payment section, and I swear to god it asks me how I will pay for it and if I will use a credit or not. Funny. I thought it would automatically add my credit since I started the whole reservation from the trip credit section. But no. It suddenly asks if I’m paying with flight credit, trip credit, or credit card. So I go back out to find out if it’s a flight or trip credit and to find the credit number. But guess what? As soon as I do that it cancels everything I’ve inputted again. How dare you allow your stupid app to treat your customers this way. You force us all to use these stupid apps because you can’t afford real life ticket agents, and then the apps are designed by complete morons so you drive all your customers insane. Thanks for making this all so easy.

Airlines have taken an (often well deserved) beating as of late. Flying is a pretty miserable experience, for the most part. The fact that you have to steel yourself for whatever the length of time of the trip might be pretty much says it all. All that said, I installed the AA app several months ago with low expectations. Now I’m impressed it works really well in providing very good, right up to date information. It even maps out how to get from one gate to another when making a connection. Very nice. The one thing that would be nice to add is making it easier to edit passenger information, such as TSA PreCheck and Passport numbers.

As an aside, I have to also complement AA. I recently had to make changes—twice in two days—to a complicated overseas trip and the agent on the phone could not have been more helpful. The aggregate time to make both changes was only about 30 minutes, including waiting for a call back (rather than wait on hold). And no charges for either change. I’m fact I got a refund because the new flight was cheaper.

I had stopped using AA about 7 years ago because of serious problems with their service. I only returned (planned to be briefly) because I had some miles to use. Well, they’ve won me back.