[bksinger]

These are the mistakes I found from my experience with AA:
1) Frequent cancellation: I flew with AA five times, and got a cancellation twice. That's a pretty high statistic.
2) No customer empathy: They didn't personally call me when flights got cancelled. I instead got a recorded message. They didn't reschedule me on a flight where I'd arrive at the same time (there were flights at those times).
3) Long waiting time: I waited for forty minutes when I tried to contact them. This is unacceptable.
4) Incompetence: When I'm told I'm booked for something, I expect to receive a confirmation that I did, not call back and realize I wasn't booked. When they say I should get a confirmation, I should get one immediately.

Here's my most recent story (May 8th 2014):

I was originally going from Toronto, Canada to Dallas to Austin, Texas. I was supposed to arrive just before noon. The evening before, I get an automated, five second recorded message saying something like "We are informing you of a cancellation. We apologize for any inconvenience".

I go online, and find that my trip has completely changed, and that I will be arriving at 8:00 pm instead of noon. I tried to call customer service. I waited for about 40 minutes, and then decided to call Expedia and got through immediately. The Expedia representative spent 1.5 hours trying to connect with an American Airlines representative. Once he was able to, the AA representative told him that my schedule has been changed so that I would be arriving before noon. Great, I thought! Now, all I needed was an email confirming that. The Expedia representative was still with me on the phone waiting for that email. Nothing. He had to call AA again. Another representative answered about 15 minutes later saying that my request didn't go through because the plane was full.

At the end they managed to book me to arrive at 6:10 pm.

[Der Richter]

I am shocked, shocked that a notably reliable airline such as AA would ever cancel a flight.

I am shocked, shocked that AA would treat you as if you were a customer of Expedia when you are, in fact, a customer of Expedia.