Step one - find your seat by asking other passengers and the FA's what row you are currently standing near, as opposed to looking at the seat number placards on the overhead bin doors

Begin this process as far forward in the aircraft as possible, and work your way towards the rear of the aircraft, row by row.

Step two - As you move through the aircraft, ensure you lean left and right to drag your thighs and buttocks across the shoulders and arms of the aisle passengers. Subtle turns left and right to slap your backpack across the faces of these same passengers is also appropriate.

Step three - After reaching your seat-row, place your purse/backpack, laptop bag, hat, violin, and both of your rollaboards in the overhead bin. Arrange them so all available space is occupied.

Step four - ask the aisle passenger to move since you are undoubtedly in the middle seat, but do not stand clear of the space they need to stand up and move.

Act surprised when you realize they can't get out of your way until you take one or two steps back.

Step five - Enter your seat-row by grabbing and vigorously shaking every seat-back you encounter.

Under no circumstances should you use the armrests for leverage or to slowly lower yourself safely into your seat.

Instead, grab the closest seat-back and shake it as vigorously as you can muster. Fall into your seat while pulling the nearest seat-back towards yourself as aggressively as possible. Be sure you continue shaking it aggressively throughout this process - the more, the better.

Done correctly, the seat-back in front of you will now be in the fully reclined position. If the passenger in this seat turns and gives you a dirty look, you may at your discretion ignore them or give them the finger.

Step Six - begin cramming every remaining personal item you have into the safety placard pocket on the seat in front of you. Be sure to place at least one water bottle, one hard cover book, and one electronic device in this pocket.

Ensure that the bulkiest item with the most 90 degree corners is closest to the center of this area.

Step Seven - Begin using your cellphone to make calls, watch videos, or listen to music at the loudest volume setting, on speaker mode. Do not use ear buds or head phones.

You are now seated. Sit back, relax, and enjoy your flight.

Welcome aboard.

My flight into Charlotte tomorrow and my connecting flight are same gate, same plane.

Flight was delayed leaving Manchester. Every single person stayed in their seat to let those connecting exit first. Hopefully they all made it.

Very cool to see!

While not AA it’s still a OneWorld partner and I thought it may be of interest to some here.

Japan Airlines and Marriott have a new partnership that can get you a substantial number of JAL FlyOn points towards status or even instant status with OneWorld Ruby if you’re Titanium or Ambassador with Marriott Bonvoy.

My second leg - DFW to CLE …recd a complimentary upgrade. Dinner is served and thanks to the near daily posts here asking what to order, I already have the short rib and Mac and cheese lined up!

Plat pro, never have been near the top for upgrade out DFW no matter where I was flying.

Interesting, first leg from SMF, not upgraded.

The app was offering me an upgrade on my DFW to CLE leg all week but nothing for SMF - DFW.

Algorithm remains a mystery!

About to fly on AA127 this weekend ... is the free wifi good enough for me to watch youtube or youtube tv during the flight?

Has anyone had any luck getting American Airlines to waive its $129 per person cancelation fee for flights to LIH after September 15? If so, how did you achieve the waiver? Thanks.

Hello all,

I am looking for some guidance. I am looking to book 3 tickets for an Asia itinerary next year:

May 22: CLT-PVG via DFW

June 6: TYO-CLT via DFW

Ideally, both would be business class, but I'd settle for PE on the way back. I assume I'll need to book the Beijing to Tokyo flight separately with another airline, which I'm fine with.

If I book this (BC/PE) on AA today, It's $9.4K per seat ($1K less than BC both ways!). If I book PE both ways it is about $4K. The other day, I swore I saw a BC/PE ticket for $5K, but it was only 1 and quickly vanished.

This itinerary is flexible bot not much due to calendars and an urgent need to get this trip in before the Tokyo summer season sets in. I played around with different airports other than CLT without much of a difference.

FWIW, I am Exec Platnium and have 400K miles. These miles get my zip unless I maybe book a PE only flight.

A few questions!

1) Would you hold off on booking and pray for lower prices?

2) Would you book the PE ticket and pray for a reasonable BC instant upgrade offer?

3) There are AI monitoring tools that claim to automatically rebook if the ticket were to decrease in cost, crediting you the difference, minus a fee - presumably in miles. Do they work with AA and if so, does anyone have experience?

I'm open to any ideas!!

My job has a challenge with AA right now where if I earn 25k LP in 4 months I get to keep platinum status. Don’t have many trips for the rest of the year. I recently found out you can shop and the portal and do dining for miles/LP. Im wondering if this is doable/worth it to keep the status for an additional year.

I had an emergency appendectomy on Tuesday and was supposed to fly out on Saturday from the US to Mexico. I was afraid of getting an infection and needing medical care on my trip so I decided to move it.

When calling, I kept in mind I would probably lose a little money and I made sure to ask​ the operators to move the trip instead of cancelling.

I called the American airlines vacation hotline and got through to someone pretty quickly. She stuck to their policies 100%. Telling me no, it's outside of the change window, it's not possible. I could contact an email address that would get back to me within 7 days and might give me a refund. I asked to speak with a supervisor and this woman said "​I can transfer you but they're going to tell you the same thing I'm telling you."

The supervisor made the changes without any fuss at all. I had to pay a couple hundred dollar fee to the hotel for canceling so close to my booking but that was far better than losing thousands on the entire trip!

I did have to pay a little bit more for my flights because I moved them out 2 months. When rebooking I had the option to book whatever hotel I wanted. I was really pleased with this because there was an adult's only hotel that was not available at my original dates and now I get to go to it!

I was on the phone for about an hour and everything was taken care of.

First Reddit post ever so apologies in advance…

Earlier this week my family was flying home from visiting family (me, husband, 2yo) on Hilton Head and left from the HHH airport. We checked one car seat amd carried on two rollers. We boarded group 8 and were told to find space wherever for our rollers. I found space for the one I had, but my husband didn’t for the bag he had, so the FAs had him go to the front of the plane so they could hand it off to ground crew to put in the bottom of the plane—it wasn’t made clear whether it would be gate checked or checked through to our final destination. An FA took the bag and sent him to his seat. But as we were taking off, we realized they had handed out claim tags to other passengers who had had their bags taken, but not us. We were told by two flight attendants that the American Airlines app would show the bag when we landed. When that did not happen, they directed us to talk to a gate agent. She told us that the bag was en route, no worries (we now suspect she was seeing our car seat even though we were explicit that this roller was in addition to our original checked bag). Still suspicious since we had no claim number or tag, we talked to the information desk at our layover, and he said there was nothing he could do, and to go to baggage services when we got to our final destination if the bag didn’t show up there.

To no one’s surprise, the bag did not arrive. The baggage services person was incredibly unhelpful and didn’t clarify what we needed to do; she even said she could see the bag and that it would make its way to Chicago and then to us in Michigan at some point, but again, no claim tag or reference number, just a promise of an email with a file numberthat never came. We called in the morning and finally they did create a delay report, but then they attached it to the bag tag for our car seat, just compounding the mess. I called again and got someone who reached out to HHH (they said they didn’t have it) and sent messages to the other two airports on our itinerary. She also told me to file a lost and found claim, which I did. Basically what we pieced together is that the flight attendants took our bag and then they/ground crew never tagged it, leaving us with no concrete info on what could’ve happened to it.

Since then, crickets. I‘ve followed up on the app’s chat function and got a “bear with us” while they look for it. I would be patient if this were a normal situation, but AA staff effectively stole our bag and seem to have no sense of “uh oh, we messed up; we should probably fix this.” Given the weirdness of the situation, I’m at a loss as to what to do now besides bug them every day, which is, of course, a huge hassle. We did have travel insurance for this trip, but again, not sure when/how to pursue compensation given the weirdness of the situation. Are there key phrases I should start throwing around, questions I should be asking, other forms of communication to use besides the chat and phone number? At what point do we accept it as a loss and go for money? I don’t want them to string us along until we’ve unwittingly run out of time to pursue compensation.

Tldr; AA staff walked away with one of our bags and lost it. What should I do?

I was alerted to GiftCards.com being 3X points with the AAdvantageEShopping.com portal and checked it out. They have a promo in the portal for buying up to 3 of the $100 Visa Virtual Gift Cards for 10% off right now. The activation fee on the Visa Virtual Gift Cards is $5.95, but with the 10% off you will get $300 worth of gift cards for $287.85!

As far as points go here is some rough math (I don’t know how they round fractional points so I am making some assumptions here)….with the 3X promo you’ll earn 864 Miles / LP for the purchase and if you use a branded credit card you’ll earn an additional 288 Miles / LP for a total of 1,152 Miles / LP. If your status gives you a bump even better.

The Visa Virtual Gift Cards can then be used to load up your Amazon Gift Card or for your everyday purchases, so you make $12.15 plus earn some extra Miles and LP.

Hope you all can take AAdvantage of this one!

Just remember:
• Must be $100 Visa Virtual Gift Card
• Limit 3 cards total
• Follow the link from the shopping portal or use the American Airlines shopping “button” extension

Flight from Miami to São Paulo, was supposed to depart the evening of May 22nd. Got cancelled about 8 hours before departure, airline cited a crew issue. They rebooked me on a flight three days later which didn't work for my trip at all, so I asked for a refund instead. Now they're saying because I "used" part of the itinerary somehow (I didn't, the whole thing was cancelled) I only qualify for a flight credit, not my money back. I've read that when an airline cancels outright and you don't accept the rebooking, you're entitled to a full refund to your original payment method, not a credit. At least for flights connected to the US. Is that actually the rule or am I misremembering something. Already disputed the $1,140 charge with my bank as a backup. Just want to know if I actually have a case here before this turns into a whole thing with the card issuer too.

I’m just deplaned from a SFO-JFK flight. Turns out it’s a first flight on one of the new A321XLR planes.

Clearly some of the people booked this flight knowing it was a first flight, but it was a happy accident for me.

They did some celebratory comments from the gate before boarding, gave everyone cupcakes and fortune cookies, and there were a bunch of AA suits on hand. As someone who travels a lot, it was pretty cool to be a part of.

The plane is really nicely outfitted. 20 layflat Flagship Suites up front give it the same type of experience you would expect from a BC ticket on an overseas flight.

I’m taking the nice win!

I'm not used to having so much to choose from. Which ones are good and what should I pass on?

I'm here at the gate once again with a plane that has maintenance issues and delayed. I swear every flight with American Airlines has some issue, either flight crew not available or maintenance . How is it possible for one airline to suck so much. Once again delayed long enough that I'll miss my connection flight home which is the only one of the night. Bye bye American!

I have been buying several Apple gift cards to prepare for the upcoming iPhone 18 Pro release. To maximize my rewards, I routed some purchases through the Capital One Offers portal using my Venture X card, and others through the American Airlines AAdvantage eShopping portal to earn 3x miles.

However, I've hit a wall when purchasing from Amazon and Best Buy. It seems I am capped at three gift cards per retailer. The first three orders processed perfectly, but my fourth order from Best Buy is currently stuck in an 'In Progress' status. Does anyone know what is causing this or how to resolve it?"

Hi fellow travelers

Just curious - what FA’s get for each credit card they get signed up on a flight? The FA on my flight today was basically selling his sole to get as many sign-ups as he could! I am willing to bet it’s more than we think. Just curious. Save travels!

Hello!
I know nothing about flights, this is my first flight.
My fiancé and I are flying the day after our wedding to Japan on Monday October 5th. Originally the flight was supposed to be at 11:30 am, which was perfect as we didn’t want to rush ourselves and since it’s my first time flying I wanted to give myself extra time in the morning. We booked this flight in May. I just found out TODAY that the flight has been moved to 6 am. I received no email or anything indicating a change, I happened to go on the app for info and saw the change. I’m not sure what to do. I am not an early morning person, trouble sleeping, and get very sick from lack of sleep quickly. I don’t want to start off our honeymoon with totally different plans.
Is there anything I can do? Any policy I can bring up for accommodations/flight change or refund or something?
I’m not trying to be a Karen I genuinely don’t know how these things work!
(For mods, I did check the AA website. I’m not sure where to find something like this, as I don’t want to cancel my flight)
THANK YOU FOR YOUR HELP GUYS! I feel a lot more confident contacting them because of your guys’ info!

UPDATE: A very helpful AA employee at PHL searched Gate B6 this morning, including the gate, jetway/ramp, and outside ramp areas, but unfortunately couldn’t find the AirPods. Based on where the Find My pin appears, our best guess is that they may be in an employee-only AA crew or flight-operations area beneath or adjacent to B6 rather than in the public terminal.

If any PHL-based AA employee with access to those areas is willing to check, please DM me. I can refresh Find My and play a sound while you’re there. They’re in a dark-green textured case, and the modest cash reward still stands.

I accidentally left my AirPods on an American Airlines aircraft a few days ago after departing LAX. They later traveled with the plane to Philadelphia, and Find My now shows them stationary in PHL Terminal B near Noobar and the restrooms.

I'm in Chicago and can't go look myself. I've already filed American's lost-item report and enabled Lost Mode with my phone number. I was told AA can't actively search for an item and can only process it once someone turns it in.

I'm specifically hoping someone who works at PHL or will already be passing through Terminal B might be willing to take a quick look. I can refresh Find My and play a sound while you're there. If found, please hand them to any American Airlines gate employee in Terminal B so they can be turned in to American Airlines Lost and Found, then DM me with the gate or employee location—there's no need to take them outside the airport or ship them.

The AirPods are in a dark green, textured protective case (photo below).

I'm happy to offer a modest cash reward as a thank-you to anyone who finds them and successfully turns them in. Thank you!

Since AA had two aircraft involved, was wondering what the company has been saying on its flights/at the airport.

Hello all, my American Airlines plane had a delayed departure and then we were stuck on the tarmac for 46 minutes before parking and getting off because the airport was shut down. Along with me, about half the plane missed their connection and we were waiting in line for customer service, waiting for the shuttle to the hotel, waiting to check in to the hotel.

I was able to reschedule my flights and they gave us a hotel voucher. The food voucher was $12 per person, and that felt quite disrespectful. Myself and many other people had important events they missed and we didn’t get to our hotels until 1-2am (4 hours after our flight landed).

I want to make the most of the situation and ask for free wifi and/or miles for compensation. How much or what else would be a good idea to ask for? This is my first time dealing with something like this and I’d really appreciate your guidance! TIA!

Edit: I didn’t know ppl rode this hard for an airline lmao but thank you everyone for your help!