[veritas01]

If you are talking about my English I will apologize. My typing is not the best nor is my eyesight. Add in a couple of glasses of wine and my rush to post without proof reading and you can get a hodge podge. Ironically I was an English major in undergrad and I hold an MBA degree. Neither is a guarantee of anything.
No I don’t know anything about airline administration. I am not a pilot, or a flight attendant or an aircraft mechanic. I am a passenger. I shouldn’t have to know about the intricacies of running a major airline. I also want to state again I am a big fan of American Airlines. I try and fly them exclusively domestically and I have found their flight to Argentina to be the cheapest, most direct and most comfortable of all the airlines I have used previously. They almost always do a good job. This time they didn’t.
If the flight had been delayed for weather, or a real mechanical problem with our plane, or any reason outside of the control of American we would not be having this discussion. When you buy a ticket you take a chance that everything will go perfectly and amazingly it usually does. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be to manage a business that is based on machines, people and weather…all widely unpredictable. Throw in the general public who thinks they have paid for the right to be idiots and you have a nightmare. I enjoyed the show Airline. Amazing what people will do or say. But I digress.
As I said I could have understood a delay outside of the control of American. This was a decision made by a person for reasons American is unwilling to divulge. Just tell me how you made the decision and please stop lying to me.
Prejudice is often subjective. What is offensive to one person can very well be trivial to another. The key to unmasking even the slightest suggestion of prejudice in this case is transparency. American should be willing to explain the process by which our flight was chosen to be delayed in deference to the already delayed flight to Zurich. I know there is computer software that helps airline administrators make informed decisions. These decisions are certainly geared towards finding a solution that disrupts the fewest number of passengers without seriously effecting American’s bottom line. I realize that no single flight exists in a vacuum. Planes and flight crews are scheduled out in a never ending matrix that is like a house of cards. Pull the wrong card and you have problems throughout the system. Customer Service would not divulge the process by which the decision to delay my flight for 12 hours was made. So…in creeps supposition. I say could prejudice be involved? I have no proof. You say prejudice was not involved….but you have no proof. In the absence of proof the truth becomes elusive.
I have flown for business and pleasure for over 30 years. I have never heard of “equipment move up”. I think the public should know this is something that might happen to them. Publications are interested in the story because they think the public wants to know too, they are curious why American couldn’t tell the truth about the cause of the delay, and the hint of prejudice adds enough spice to draw some readers.
Speaking of truth I notice nobody commenting on my major gripe. The fact that American staffers consistently lied about the cause of the delay. I think it was cowardly for them to say the delay was for our safety and the result of a mechanical problem on our plane. It was simply not true. In reality it was not a well thought out decision to board the passengers from the Zurich flight in full view of the passengers for the Buenos Aires flight. Hey that’s our plane. No its not. Well the American staff that was here an hour ago said that was our plane. These people should never play 3 card Monty.