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4 ways American Airlines is trying to fix its industry-worst tech experience – The Dallas Morning News


American Airlines is putting its faith in smartphones to cut down on those long, anxious lines of passengers at gates when flights are overbooked or long-delayed.

One feature lets customers put in an offer when a flight has too many scheduled passengers, a sort of silent auction for overbooked planes. Another has improved the airline’s ability to seat families together.

After six years of falling behind other airlines, leaders for the Fort Worth-based carrier say they are finally catching up with a handful of improvements to their apps, kiosks and websites that could remove some of the most stressful parts of flying.

“There were some things, admittedly, we weren’t good at,” said Maya Leibman, American Airlines’ executive vice president and chief information officer. “I would say that we have closed every major gap with our competitors.”

American Airlines’ smartphone and tablet apps have ranked at the bottom of J.D. Power and Associates’ last two airline app studies, sinking to last behind United in a study released last week.

While Delta and Southwest have some of the smoothest operating apps, United has been the front-runner with innovations, said James Larounis, who studies airline technology for frequent-flyer website UpgradedPoints.com.

“American kind of lags everybody in terms of innovation,” Larounis said.

Volunteering on overbooked flights

American Airlines has bumped more passengers this year than all other U.S. airlines combined.

In May, the airline introduced an auction-style system that lets customers bid the price they’d want to be moved to a different flight. Back then, American would pay all volunteers the same price, usually the highest bid.

At the beginning of November, the airline changed that to give customers the price they bid regardless of what other customers offered. American also gives them alternative flight options before they receive the bid.

Julie Rath, American’s senior vice president of customer experience, said the company is trying to cut off the last-minute process altogether by offering customers options earlier during check-in or before they leave for the airport.

“What we are trying to do is getting work away from the gate agent so they aren’t processing transactions and are helping people,” Rath said.

The new volunteering system comes after American introduced an app system in 2017 to give customers the option to rebook their own flight after cancellations and delays.

However, Larounis said the auction-style process has had some hiccups. For one flight in early November, he said he volunteered over the app but gate agents continued asking verbally for volunteers. Customers still had to go talk to the gate agents.

“It hasn’t made it that much simpler,” he said.

Family seating

American has changed some of its behind-the-scenes software to give better seating for families flying with young children. Any child younger than 15 is automatically seated next to parents, even without picking seats in advance.

The airline also automatically blocks off a handful of rows for seat assignments on each flight that can only be filled at the airport, giving more flexibility to seat families next to one another.

‘Board now’

American is now sending “Board Now” push notifications to phones, along with notifications about flight delays, cancellations and other changes. Leibman said notifications are more noticeable than emails.

“It does impact the boarding process and what happens at the gate,” Rath said. “It lifts the stress.”

American is also sending more alerts when planes land or boarding has ended and pushing notifications about time zone changes and directions to connecting gates.

A screenshot of the check-in kiosk for American Airlines
A screenshot of the check-in kiosk for American Airlines(American Airlines / American Airlines)

Improved kiosks

At DFW International Airport and elsewhere, American has installed large, touch-screen kiosks to check-in for flights, print luggage tags and boarding passes.

But the carrier is still refining the machines and recently rolled out an update that can cut down the process by as much as 40%, Rath said.

“For example, we took out the step asking if the customer had a lap child,” Rath said. “Not everyone needs that.”

Now many of those steps are on one screen, letting passengers skip over sections that don’t apply to them.



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