Booked via AA website to Madrid in January, code share AA and Iberia, business class. Day of travel Iberia moved us over to a Delta flight for no reason. Our original AA and IB flights were both on time as per flightaware.com post trip review of data. Basically, we got bumped for priority Iberia customers even though we are million mile fliers with AA. If we wanted Delta, we would have booked it.
Trip home: got to Madrid airport and Iberia had us on standby for business class! We booked 5 months ago! Business class! Called AA and they could do absolutely nothing. Since it was an Iberia flight; they have no control nor visibility.
Sat on hold with AA for 20 minutes. They could give me zero problem resolution, other than an apology, Iberia is 'out of our control'. The websites do not connect and you have to secure seats via the code share airline. We did that 6 weeks ago directly with Iberia, and we arrive this morning on standby. The Iberia mobile app gave us error messages when we attempted to review flight status weeks ago.
The end result here: American is simply a broker for their one world partners and have no visibility into their and seating algorithms. American is the carrier of record, and yet not enough technology to provide visibility and accountability inside of their one world network.
We will find out what the other 2 major US carriers offer in this area. read more