American Airlines' Latest Move Is Bad News for Summer Travelers
We're just a couple of months away from the busy summer travel season, which will have thousands of people jetting off on highly-anticipated vacations. And if you happen to be flying on American Airlines for an upcoming trip? You'll want to be aware of one of the latest changes they just made, which will likely have an impact on people's summer plans.
According to Gary Leff for View From the Wing, the airline plans on cutting back on their airport customer service hours, which is presumably an effort to cut back on overhead by reducing staff hours.
So if you happen to be on a layover and your flight is canceled, and it doesn't happen during those new customer service hours? Be prepared to wait on hold for an indefinite amount of time with their phone customer service reps.The cutbacks are as follows:
He notes that, "The Chicago O'Hare Customer Service Center is currently open 6 a.m. – 11 p.m. But on the upcoming employee summer shift bid, service center shifts prior to 2 p.m. have been eliminated."
Based on that information, it sounds like travelers won't be able to get live customer service help during the busy morning hours, which would be incredibly inconvenient in the case of a missed connection or canceled flight. Leff also adds that customer service usually ramps up their hours in summer, so doing the opposite could have even more of a negative impact.
Air travel is stressful enough these days without additional headaches, so if American continues to cut back on customer service, the airline is going to wind up with plenty of unhappy fliers, which is the last thing it needs.
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