ExFlyBoy5
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Long story short, we just returned from a week'ish in Mexico. Trip plan was fly from OKC to DFW to CUN, private transfer to private home and back to airport then back to OKC via DFW. Flights were on American Airlines.
I could write a novel on my hatred for American Airlines, but suffice it say after this trip I will not EVER fly with them again unless I have ZERO choices and it's an emergency.
The trip to CUN (and transfer from airport to house) was pretty uneventful. AA made the trip more expensive by changing the aircraft type from OKC to DFW and taking away our seat assignments. The ONLY way to get a seat assignment was to pay for a comfort+ (or whatever they call it) or wait until you check in at the gate. Big risk for flights that usually overbooked (and they were). After a conversation w/ an AA CSR that is NOT happy with her station in life, we got seats on the OKC-DFW leg and all was good. DFW to CUN was interesting because AA decided to start flying the Boeing 777 (usually used for longer flights) to CUN to keep those jets flying. CUN is not equipped to handle wide bodied jets that are filled to capacity and this was evident with the 1+20 minutes it took to get our luggage at the CUN airport. The immigration process was wonderful, we cleared it in less than 2 minutes!
The transfer to our private house a couple of hours south of CUN was uneventful, but there were A LOT of travelers outside the CUN terminal trying to get a taxi and it sounded like it was taking a while to do so.
After a week of enjoying our time away, we took another private transfer to CUN and that was pretty easy, too. We got our COVID test a couple days prior to the flight and uploaded the results to the Verifly application as recommended by AA. That was pretty painless, but you had to show the app (and the "green check" no less than 6 times before actually boarding the airplane. The airport was pretty busy and folks were OK at social distancing (except at the gate where the "gate fleas" were in full effect and were huddled in groups all around the gate) and getting to the gate wasn't an issue. Well, that is where is all went down hill.
Remember when I mentioned that CUN is not equipped to handle wide bodied jets that are absolutely full? Well, when AA decides to fly the 787 Dreamliner from CUN to DFW, there will probably be issues. Biggest thing is that it took a very long time to get all the luggage on board and even longer to get all the passengers boarded. When it was all said and done, we took off about an hour late.
A few weeks before our trip, AA changed our itinerary. We initially had a 3 hour and 20 minute layover in DFW but after the change it was reduced to an hour an 45 minutes. You can already see where this is going. My blood pressure is still quite elevated but the end story is that customs in DFW took my DW and her sister about an hour and 15 minutes to clear (DW and I are Global Entry members but her sister is not, so we decided I would get all the bags and try and make the flight to OKC while my DW accompanied her sister through customs). I made the flight but my DW and her sister missed it by less than 5 minutes.
There were no more flights that night, all the flights the next day were already over booked, there were no rental cars available and it took almost 3 hours to find a single hotel room about an hour from the airport (and that was NOT done by AA since there was only one AA employee that my DW could find (luggage area) and that employee was so busy on her phone, she was of no help to them. The employee said, "sorry, you will have to call someone at AA, no one is here to help you." Between me, my DW and her sister we called over 60 hotels before finding that single room (that they didn't want to fess up when they got there, but that's another story).
Ultimately, I was able to drive down to get my DW and her sister the next morning and get them back home but it was quite the challenge.
Outside the fact the American Airlines is the devil incarnate, we enjoyed our trip and look forward to our next one...but NOT on American Airlines.
I could write a novel on my hatred for American Airlines, but suffice it say after this trip I will not EVER fly with them again unless I have ZERO choices and it's an emergency.
The trip to CUN (and transfer from airport to house) was pretty uneventful. AA made the trip more expensive by changing the aircraft type from OKC to DFW and taking away our seat assignments. The ONLY way to get a seat assignment was to pay for a comfort+ (or whatever they call it) or wait until you check in at the gate. Big risk for flights that usually overbooked (and they were). After a conversation w/ an AA CSR that is NOT happy with her station in life, we got seats on the OKC-DFW leg and all was good. DFW to CUN was interesting because AA decided to start flying the Boeing 777 (usually used for longer flights) to CUN to keep those jets flying. CUN is not equipped to handle wide bodied jets that are filled to capacity and this was evident with the 1+20 minutes it took to get our luggage at the CUN airport. The immigration process was wonderful, we cleared it in less than 2 minutes!
The transfer to our private house a couple of hours south of CUN was uneventful, but there were A LOT of travelers outside the CUN terminal trying to get a taxi and it sounded like it was taking a while to do so.
After a week of enjoying our time away, we took another private transfer to CUN and that was pretty easy, too. We got our COVID test a couple days prior to the flight and uploaded the results to the Verifly application as recommended by AA. That was pretty painless, but you had to show the app (and the "green check" no less than 6 times before actually boarding the airplane. The airport was pretty busy and folks were OK at social distancing (except at the gate where the "gate fleas" were in full effect and were huddled in groups all around the gate) and getting to the gate wasn't an issue. Well, that is where is all went down hill.
Remember when I mentioned that CUN is not equipped to handle wide bodied jets that are absolutely full? Well, when AA decides to fly the 787 Dreamliner from CUN to DFW, there will probably be issues. Biggest thing is that it took a very long time to get all the luggage on board and even longer to get all the passengers boarded. When it was all said and done, we took off about an hour late.
A few weeks before our trip, AA changed our itinerary. We initially had a 3 hour and 20 minute layover in DFW but after the change it was reduced to an hour an 45 minutes. You can already see where this is going. My blood pressure is still quite elevated but the end story is that customs in DFW took my DW and her sister about an hour and 15 minutes to clear (DW and I are Global Entry members but her sister is not, so we decided I would get all the bags and try and make the flight to OKC while my DW accompanied her sister through customs). I made the flight but my DW and her sister missed it by less than 5 minutes.
There were no more flights that night, all the flights the next day were already over booked, there were no rental cars available and it took almost 3 hours to find a single hotel room about an hour from the airport (and that was NOT done by AA since there was only one AA employee that my DW could find (luggage area) and that employee was so busy on her phone, she was of no help to them. The employee said, "sorry, you will have to call someone at AA, no one is here to help you." Between me, my DW and her sister we called over 60 hotels before finding that single room (that they didn't want to fess up when they got there, but that's another story).
Ultimately, I was able to drive down to get my DW and her sister the next morning and get them back home but it was quite the challenge.
Outside the fact the American Airlines is the devil incarnate, we enjoyed our trip and look forward to our next one...but NOT on American Airlines.
Last edited:
I gave them to our daughter.......
Important for us OP's. However, as stated, we paid to be taken better care of and were not on that airline. Not our experience on Alaska, British and other one world alliance brands.
