An interesting day at BDL. AA5216 boarded on time and pushed a little bit early. After sitting on the tarmac for about 20 minutes, the captain came on and said ATC had given us a much shorter route to DCA that would save us a half hour of flying time but that we now had too much fuel and would need to offload some fuel. Apart from the cabin becoming hotter, nothing happened for the next 40 minutes or so, as we sat on the tarmac. The captain then cam back on and said that as refueling would take significant time, we had to go back to the gate and deplane. Initially, we were told to stand in the jetway for valet tagged bags to be returned, but after about 10 minutes, a service rep came on and said that we should be able to reboard in 30 minutes or so, so retrieving bags was unnecessary.
I fly a lot and put up with a lot of delays, some warranted and some seemingly not. I certainly recognize that not everything here is in AAs control. I also recognize that what is likely ultimately to be a 2 to 2 1/2 hour delay is not unusual and is certainly better than what my wife and many others are experiencing at ORD today. That said, maybe Im missing something, but the lack of communication and the length of time it takes to make decisions (does it really take an hour to determine that offloading fuel requires going back to the gate and deplaning?) seems somewhere between bizarre and not competent. This is my fourth round trip on AA this year (Im a GS on United), and each trip has involved significant operational problems (sometimes admittedly connected with weather) that seem, at least in part, self-inflicted on AAs part. Guess Im sticking with UA. Ugh.
I fly a lot and put up with a lot of delays, some warranted and some seemingly not. I certainly recognize that not everything here is in AAs control. I also recognize that what is likely ultimately to be a 2 to 2 1/2 hour delay is not unusual and is certainly better than what my wife and many others are experiencing at ORD today. That said, maybe Im missing something, but the lack of communication and the length of time it takes to make decisions (does it really take an hour to determine that offloading fuel requires going back to the gate and deplaning?) seems somewhere between bizarre and not competent. This is my fourth round trip on AA this year (Im a GS on United), and each trip has involved significant operational problems (sometimes admittedly connected with weather) that seem, at least in part, self-inflicted on AAs part. Guess Im sticking with UA. Ugh.