Yeah. Their auto-rebook usually picks a worse flight.
They're saying no one else wants it, so we booked it for you.
Instead, it gives us an incentive to find a better flight.
What I’ve noticed they last several years, is the algorithm tends to book the closet departure time to your original departure time, and more often than not a later time. That’s what’s happened the last couple of flight changes we’ve experienced. With SWA we lost our crack of dawn departure and was rebooked later that morning. With American we lost our late morning flight and was booked an early afternoon departure. I think they go later to refuse e the possibility someone doesn’t get the notification. It’s better to show up early than show up late and miss the flight.
No algorithm is perfect. We often leave on the second flight of the day so we don’t have to drop our dogs off at the kennel the day before. So if the algorithm books us a little later, it usually works. Then there are times we book first class seats and price becomes more of an issue than flight times or routes. Our ICT to SFO was booked with price being more important than route, so it was a late afternoon route. When AA changed the route significantly enough we could rebook, we were able to snag our preferred route, which was an earlier flight but at a much higher price. Their algorithm didn’t work for us, but the ability to make our own change because they made changes worked well for us.
As time goes on we’ve had to learn and adapt to airline rules. We use to always fly coach class and routing weighed heavier in our decisions. At this point in our life, we’re flying first/business class more than we’ve ever flown (not always, let’s not get to crazy), and my thinking and priorities have changed. Price has become more important than finding the perfect routing or flying a particular carrier. In those situations I book what will work regardless of route and wait for the airline to make a change, then try to change to what our preferred route would have been if not for the price.
The ultimate test is going to be our Kauai flights next year. Routing from our home airport is never that great as it is, and many of AA’s routes have an overnight layover, either in Dallas, LAX or SFO (AA tends to be the least expensive first/business class when traveling west.) This is fine by us as we’re willing to leave the day before, but now we’ll toss in the preferred city for the overnight layover. Just another twist in the airline games.
