Seeeeeveral issues to be touched on.
1.We have a dedicated department that deals with flights changes. They call every single person if a flight cancels. But only if YOU have a valid phone number in your record. Often when you make your reservation through a company, their fax number, business number, 1800 number, and every number are in there except for YOUR personal number. I myself called all the passegers on one of my canceled flights. I had one passenger who came to the counter and complained that I had not called her. I told her her number was not in your record and she had the audacity to say, "Well why didn't you look it up in the phone book?!"
2.There is a fundamental difference between Continental Airlines and American Airlines. CO empowers their agents to use their common sense and do the right thing. Do whatever you have to do to make sure the customer is satisfied. American does not empower their agents. Almost all of my actions are monitored by someone in headquarters in Dallas or Tulsa. It drives me nuts.
Actually well that doesn't stop me per se. A passenger missed her flight last week and she owned up for being late. She was nice to me, sorry she was late, and explained where she had to be. A funeral. Meh so I just confirmed her and did not make her pay a penalty or anything. The airline didn't lose any money over it and it made her happy.
3.I'm a nice guy. I consider myself a good agent. It seems as though all the articles on the news and any kind of media attention the airlines get is negative. What about that one time that one sympathetic agent helped you out? Or that one trip that was made just so much better because of something an agent did? Or that flight that actually arrived 30 minutes early and you had extra time to have breakfast before your next flight? Or the time there was a screaming kid in the aisle across and the flight attendant was like, "hey here's a bottle of wine, hope this helps
" Okay well that last one...maybe not so much
