[sallie]

I generally like American Airlines but lately I'm starting to be a little concerned about their airplanes. They're old and with that comes a greater likelihood of mechanical problems. A family member of mine recently traveled from Los Angeles to the Caribbean. What an adventure that turned out to be! I admire him for taking it all in stride.

He had an overnight flight to Miami. While sitting at the gate at LAX an hour before departure the passengers were told that there was a mechanical problem with the plane. They did have another plane available and were told to move to another gate. Boarding took place an hour late. The plane taxied to the runway, then moved out of the line and went back to the gate. The captain told the passengers there was a problem with the fuel pump and maintenance was looking at it. Two hours later, the captain told the passengers the problem couldn't be fixed. The flight was cancelled. It was now 2:00 in the morning. That meant, of course, he would miss his connecting flight. To make matters worse, there is only one flight a day to that particular Caribbean destination and the next day's flight was full so he couldn't get on it. Thankfully, another airline had room on their flight so he got on that one. AA arranged for that so I give them credit for that. He got to his vacation 24 hours late. Good thing he wasn't on a cruise or he would have missed the ship.

Return flight home, the flight to Miami was uneventful and arrived on time. Flight from Miami to LA - same problem!! They did board the plane on time, mechanical problem with the plane, everyone got off and moved to another gate at the other end of the terminal - 40 gates away. All of the luggage had to be offloaded and put onto new plane. Plane departs two hours late. At least it wasn't cancelled.

So, bottom line, 3 planes on his trip were taken out of service due to mechanical problems. I know that AA has a lot of planes and this is going to happen, but really American Airlines, this is excessive. I've traveled AA quite a bit myself and have had some problems but generally they're pretty good. I have noticed, however, that many of their planes are old. Probably older than the industry average.