American Airlines has a lot of problems both in operations and customer service but now it seems their reservations hotline has also melted down as customers (at least those without status) have to wait in excess of three hours on the phone until maybe someone is going to pick up the call.
We received a lot of complaints from readers with all different types of AAdvantage tier levels and the common issue was that it takes forever to get someone on the line.
Airlines appear to have completely lost the plot these days when it comes to their customer service approach and it isn’t just American Airlines though they are the worst offender right now.
Usually, American Airlines prioritizes callers by AAdvantage status, and to my knowledge that still works if you call the Executive Platinum Desk for example, and enter your membership number (or are identified by phone number).
After we got so many complaints from readers about this I decided to do a test. Needless to say, the complaints are entirely justified.
I called with both an AAdvantage Executive Platinum and a Gold account.
Executive Platinum offered a call back between 1.5-2 hours. Gold 3-4 hours and I just let the line ring through:
Not sure what happened after this 2:43 h because I fell asleep. Probably someone eventually answered or the call just dropped.
Let’s just assume someone did answer at 11 pm after almost 3 hours on hold that’s absolutely ridiculous and subpar service. How are customers supposed to deal with this situation? Set half a day aside to solve a ticketing issue?
You could try to contact American Airlines via Twitter and usually, they are much faster and easier accessible than the phone agents:
American Airlines’ social media team was able to solve problems via Twitter multiple times for me and by now it’s actually my favorite communications channel with AA (less is more). Try it!
Conclusion
There is either a staffing shortage, an onslaught of passengers who need assistance, or (most likely) a combination of both that causes American Airlines reservations centers to meltdown right now.
Having several hour-long wait periods is totally unacceptable for any provider, let alone an airline where people often call with time-sensitive matters. I can only advise trying and using Twitter to contact AA if the attempt to reach them by phone doesn’t yield any results.
