Dear American Airlines,
I just thought that I would give you a little friendly advice. I am no financial expert but I have taken one semester of microeconomics. Apparently, this has provided me with more financial wisdom than all of the people in your company. Particularly your employees in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Allow me to give you an example of the stupidity that goes on in Puerto Rico.
Let's say that you have a flight from Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) scheduled to arrive in San Juan, Puerto Rico (SJU) at 6:55pm on Tuesday, August 19th. Now for the sake of this example, pretend that there are at least 12 people on that flight that are flying to SJU to connect to a flight to The Island. We'll also add in a hypothetical flight from Miami to SJU, also scheduled to land at around 7pm. There will be another 12 or so hypothetical people on this flight that are on the connecting flight to The Island.
Now, let's say that the flight from DFW takes off about 30 minutes late because of a last minute gate change. The flight from Miami will take off 15 minutes late because of the chaos that you call boarding.
Both of these flights land in SJU between 7:20pm and 7:30 pm. Approximately 24 people are scheduled to be on the flight to The Island. Not 2. Not 4. Twenty-four people. I mean, twenty-four hypothetical people.
At no fault of their own, 24 people are stuck in Puerto Rico until 7:40 pm the next day. You are kind enough to provide vouchers to each and everyone of these people for lodging, food, taxi services between the airport and hotel, and rebook everyone on the next flight the following day.
Let's say that each person was given meal vouchers totaling $22 (breakfast, lunch, and dinner), a hotel voucher for a hotel that costs $350/night, and taxi vouchers for $20. We'll pretend that people were traveling in pairs (since most people were, I mean most people do). Just a little bit of simple math tells us that you've now spent $4968 on vouchers. For the people missing one flight. I can't imagine that this was the only time that flights were delayed forcing people to miss their connections.
Explain to me how this is financially responsible. Please. I do not understand. If you had delayed the flight to The Island by just one hour you would have saved nearly FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS.
I know people hate when flights are delayed. I know that you hate listening to customers complain. In fact, you hate it so much that you just flat out ignore it. Perhaps if you would start making better financial decisions (like delaying a flight or 2 to save thousands of dollars) you could offer more reasonable prices on your flights. Has it crossed your mind that people would complain less if they haven't paid an arm and a leg for their tickets. Maybe you could talk to the people at Jetblue. They have much lower prices than you. Ask them how many complaints they receive.
I am so tired of you crying poverty at the end of every financial quarter. You've raised your prices. You've started charging for basic services (like luggage, who doesn't travel with luggage?). What's next? No more free water? Why not use some common sense?
If their is anything else I can help you with just let me know. I'm happy to help.
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