American Airlines changed its rules at the beginning of the month to clarify that they will not reimburse hotel rooms booked by you for flights that are delayed or cancelled. They also won't cover your flight if it isn't possible to do so.
It was mostly an exercise in matching their Contract of Carriage (the adhestion agreement you sign when purchasing a ticket) with what they were actually doing in practice.
Cranky Flier claimed they should be commended for cleaning up this mess. I suggested that they be criticized for not honoring their contract of carriage prior to this update and for creating unfriendly rules for consumers.
American Airlines is having trouble delivering hotel rooms to passengers who are entitled to them. They don't have the resources to support their policy.
It doesn't matter what your opinion is about recent changes to the airline Contract of Carriage, it is worth noting they are back because they weren't enough consumer-friendly.
They have added new language to limit your ability to receive a refund. The new language has been bolded:
Our sole obligation is to cancel your flight if we or our airline partner fail to operate, or delay your arrival for more than four hours.
If you are faced with a delay of more than 4 hours, you can be eligible for a refund. This is a new requirement during the pandemic to give Americans the ability to keep their money more often.
They won't refund you for any delay beyond four hours. This is because the policy of rebooking your cancelled or delayed flight is also applicable.
This shouldn't be restrictive in practice, since it doesn't seem to prevent refunds. However, some lawyers who survived the 30% purge of management employees think that this provides additional protection to the airline for refund requests from passengers.
American Airlines does not announce any changes to its rules. American Airlines assumes that you will read the Contract of Carriage carefully before making any bookings to fully understand any changes they do not highlight.
American Airlines, please stop. You are clearly wrong if you have employees who spend hours updating your rules in order to limit customer rights. This is after your company has been in existence for nearly 100 years.
