American Starts Holding More Flights To Prevent Misconnects

American Airlines is trialing some new technology, and I think this is something that many passengers will appreciate…

American trials customer friendly technology at hubs

American has announced that it has started testing new technology at its Dallas Fort Worth (DFW) hub, which identifies departing flights with connecting customers who might miss their flight. If the airline determines it can delay the flight without any impact to the airline’s schedule, the airline will propose a short hold to get those connecting customers onboard.

American claims that the concept of holding flights for late arriving customers isn’t new for the airline, but rather, it’s the technology that’s the new development here. This new system was developed in-house by American, and it helps automate and improve existing processes.

American plans to expand the test to its Charlotte (CLT) hub next, and trial this at other hubs over the summer.

This is an overdue, customer friendly change

While American claims that it has sometimes held connections for passengers who may otherwise misconnect, that was the exception rather than the norm, in my experience, even when there were no operational impacts.

That’s because American’s focus for so long has been on getting flights out exactly on-time, regardless of the cost of doing so. Furthermore, there’s simply no arguing that automation can do this more efficiently than a human can, especially since frontline employees weren’t empowered to make those decisions.

So it’s nice to see that American is making a genuinely customer friendly change, and also that it’s investing in technology. We know that American is working on becoming more premium and customer friendly (on a budget). That doesn’t involve installing seat back TVs on domestic aircraft, but it involves making it a bit easier to fly with the airline.

Of course as you’d expect, American is following rather than leading here. Many years back, United introduced the Connection Saver program, which does exactly this. United claims that this saves hundreds of thousands of connections per year, and I’m sure that’s something that many passengers appreciate.

Bottom line

American has developed new technology to hold flights when passengers would misconnect, and there would be no operational impact to waiting several minutes. This should have positive implications for passengers. After all, a computer can make these decisions better than a human can, so I expect this will save a lot of connections. Here’s to hoping it’s rolled out on a widespread basis.

What do you make of American’s new technology to preserve connections?