Flying American these days is a hit or miss proposition. Sometimes the flight attendants are great;

Scott McCartney, the Wall Street Journal 's veteran (and Dallas-based) travel reporter, recently southwest airlines tickets aq to sea offered a word of advice to the literate public : If you or a loved one is considering stepping onto an aircraft in the foreseeable future, make sure it's not one operated by American Airlines.
"American's operation is in shambles," McCartney writes. On Sunday fewer than half of American flights arrived on-time, a quarter were at least 45 minutes late, and 92 flights were canceled. Monday was even worse. It's competitors had no such trouble. United, Southwest and US Airways all got the vast majority of their flights to the gate on time.
The reason for American's abysmal track record of late is, of course, the ongoing bankruptcy of AMR, its parent company. Pilots are not taking southwest airlines tickets aq to sea kindly to pay and benefit cuts recently imposed and are calling in sick, grounding flights for minor problems and just generally doing things slowly, all the while denying any coordinated effort to do so.
Denny Kelly, a former pilot and aviation expert, told NBC the same thing . And a recent consumer southwest airlines tickets aq to sea satisfaction ranking by airfarewatchdog.com ranked American ninth out of 10 carriers -- and that was before the recent surge in cancellations and delays.
Also: American Airlines hates both Disney World and 5-year-old girls, since it charged a family southwest airlines tickets aq to sea extra to sit together during a recent trip there. And do you really want to fly on an airline that hates Disney World?
Flying American these days is a hit or miss proposition.  Sometimes the flight attendants are great; sometimes they're crabby.  Sometimes the gate agents don't ever explain why the plane's not at the gate on time; other times they give a great explanation of why that storm system over Chicago threw a monkey wrench into the entire day.
From having friends who work for AA in management and as union employees, my personal southwest airlines tickets aq to sea observation is that while both management and union say they respect their customers, and I think they both really mean that.  But they can't stand each other.  I mean . . . really, really, REALLY can't stand each other.  Union employees think management is screwing them and running the company into the ground, and management blames the unions for all of the company's ills.  I think that mutual animosity, which has been aggravated by the bankruptcy, trickles down to customer experience.
Last time I checked,  the only AA Board member who knew anything about objects flying through the air was Staubach.  Not a single outside member with any background southwest airlines tickets aq to sea in the industry.  I understand diversity southwest airlines tickets aq to sea is needed,  but nobody who knows how to run the railroad?
AA ran Braniff out of business.  Frank did most of it himself,  AA did their share of knocking off the first Continental.  Legend?  AA moved their loudest planes to Love,  rattled the roofs.   The minute Legend was in Chapter 7,  AA moved back to DFW.  AA did that multiple times.
I'm forced to fly them occasionally,  on dirty,  stinky,  oil-smelling contraptions that were state of the art in the late 70's.  Every time I walk to the counter, southwest airlines tickets aq to sea   the experience starts again.   Like walking into somebody's house after they've just had a knock down,  drag out yelling and screaming match.  "And what the Hell do you want?"
For the past couple southwest airlines tickets aq to sea of years I've been flying back and forth to DC every couple of months. Every single southwest airlines tickets aq to sea time I've flown American, there has been an issue that was dealt with very poorly. In March, it was so bad that a gate agent in St Louis literally slammed a door in a passenger's face when he was merely trying to get some information. They are my airline of last resort at this point.
Maybe it is time to drive the proverbial wooden stake through the heart of AA and toss in a silver bullet to the head.  Perhaps the best thing to do is just to bury this mess and let someone else either move in or start from scratch.
Am I the only person in Dallas who likes American (as much as anyone can like can airline anyways)? They fly me direct to my destination 9 out of 10 times rather than making me stop twice like Southwest (or once like Delta/NW). They are usually southwest airlines tickets aq to sea reasonably southwest airlines tickets aq to sea priced (Southwest is almost never significantly cheaper - I could sometimes save by taking another southwest airlines tickets aq to sea airlines and putting up w/ a transfer but I seldom do). And they've always been good to me when flights were delayed significantly, even when it was because of the weather. After a near-tornado shut down every outgoing flight for about 12 hours, they still managed to get me to Dublin less than 15 hours later than scheduled. Their policies southwest airlines tickets aq to sea and employees are no more annoying than most airlines. Southwest gets better marks for service, but I also can't stand having southwest airlines tickets aq to sea no reserved seat. Once Southwest can fly direct outside the Wright zone I will reconsider, but for now, I fly American southwest airlines tickets aq to sea exclusively.
The pilots seem to be staging an illegal work disruption....with a wink-wink..nod-nod.."we didn't formally plan anything...." I hope the bankruptcy judge holds the APA in contempt and fines the hell out of them. I agree AA is a poorly managed airline with used up and ragged planes. AA's management and the APA deserve each other......
southwest airlines tickets aq to sea This story has been written about every single major airline.  they all went through bankruptcy and had the same issues.  It just so happens that now its AMR's turn.  As an AMR family member, it really is a joke.  Even though my wife's work group approved their new contract with tons of cost savings to the company, they immediately announce the next day they were farming out flying to other airlines. southwest airlines tickets aq to sea  Talk about a slap in the face, its no wonder the work groups southwest airlines tickets aq to sea hate management so bad.  But, in the end she is happy to still be employed and flying, unlike the rest of the country who write blogs and comments wishing for the death of the airline and all the jobs it provides
Eric, yet again you toss in some unnecessary, misleading snark at the end of a pretty decent piece. Maybe the 5-year girl has a really southwest airlines tickets aq to sea nice, rare Power Wheels parked at her preschool that you can run a picture of.
@ TexOHara  Bag time sucks at DFW because it was built before southwest airlines tickets aq to sea all the fancy schmancy southwest airlines tickets aq to sea new technology came out.  Terminal d has great bag times even with all the international traffic.  As they renovate each new terminal, the bag systems are being updated too.  I honestly cant remember though southwest airlines tickets aq to sea the last time I waited more than 10 minutes for a bag
I tend to agree with you anon.  Even with their latest problems, I fly with AA quite often and haven't experienced any of these issues.  Seems like a media witch hunt, particularly southwest airlines tickets aq to sea with the kid/family story.  While it was a scheduling change, it was resolved.  Obama/Romney snipets anyone.  Anyway, the AA employees I've dealt with have been stellar given their working situation.  I feel for all AA employees and DFW as a whole.  Just hoping southwest airlines tickets aq to sea for a solution to keep as many people working.
@ anon  I fly American almost exclusively and generally have a decent experience. Plus they have Gus Garcia-Roberts and Wilonsky in their in-flight mag. But I don't fly enough to get a representative picture.
@ anon  I usually fly every other week, mostly American, and do not understand the hate. The vast majority of the idiot behavior I've experienced in by passengers. You have to accept the fact that flying nowadays is much like taking the bus.
The Wright amendment restrictions on Southwest were created southwest airlines tickets aq to sea at the behest of lobbying by AA and DFW airport. Blame them, not SW. AA has been irreparably southwest airlines tickets aq to sea broken into shards for over a decade. They are my absolute last travel southwest airlines tickets aq to sea choice.
@ anon  It's not exactly like you have that much of a choice.  It's a scandal that American has 80+% of the flights out of DFW airport.  Try flying somewhere Southwest doesn't fly and American's prices start getting outrageous.  I used to fly American when checked bags were part of the price of a ticket, but since then I've taken Southwest if I could.
I hope the bankruptcy means AA has to get rid of some of their gates and more airlines start offering more service to DFW.  There really isn't one major airport that is so locked in to one carrier, and that has made AA rather greedy.
@ Tim.Covington  if you wont fly them now, why did you before?  Its the same employees as before, and they will be the same ones after.  Lest you forget the labor trouble at USairways now, continental, delta and northwest when they were in bankruptcy.  its not like all of sudden these people cant do their jobs
@ ScottsMerkin southwest airlines tickets aq to sea The single biggest strain on the Airlines are gas prices.  Higher top marginal rates and higher cap gains would discourage that sort of speculation, while the depreciation of capital intensive firms like AA would be far more lucrative.  Further, higher top marginal rates would have reigned in the executive's profligacy.  The stockholders and the common man get screwed, and the execs make off with the booty
One more rant: Damn the people who took the bailouts, yeah to those who didn't...circa 2008.   Damn the people who didn't take the bailouts, yeah to those who did...circa 2012.  Welcome to America.  We're fucked.
What's really a sham scotts is that AA was the only airline who didn't take a bailout during the '08 crash.  They had too much pride.  The employees did too.  They were all for one and one for all.  Problem?  Yeah.  While all the other airlines had bankruptcy protection and forced the unions to reasonable contracts and were relieved of debt, AA tried to do it the right way and is now paying the price for being the single southwest airlines tickets aq to sea honest player.  You can't win when the deck is stacked.  I give my hats to all AA employees.  You did your best, but this was never meant to be.  The only failure by management was they should have taken their ass beating in '08 and declared with everyone else.  Now, they're just pieces of shit.  So sad.
@ Scruffygeist "As a mother, I couldn't imagine letting my child fly next to a stranger..."  Simple solution, you sit with the kid, husband sits with