On my way back from the Boarding Area Conference (BACon) at Colorado Springs which ended today, I was booked on a very simple route to get to New York via Dallas/Fort Worth in the afternoon. If all would have been well, I’d have been on the East Coast by now, sleeping in a hotel room in Manhattan. However, it was not to be.

Once we were seated on our slightly delayed flight, the captain informed us we had a flat tire on the plane, which could happen on landing at high altitude airports such as COS, and as such, they won’t be able to move before the tire was changed. The good news, he said was, they had a tire and a jack at the airport, so all they had to do was fix this thing and it would be 30 minutes to 45 before we’d be on our way, considering paperwork needed to be done. I thought, even a plain and simple car tire takes a while to fix, so this plane isn’t going anywhere soon! This is how it looks when there are people trying to replace a plane tire.

We were advised to deplane and wait inside the terminal and things were not looking good now. I was booked on the second-last flight to NYC that evening from DFW, and I called to protect on the last flight out, however I was informed the flight was sold out and I could not go anywhere till the morning. I would be on my way on the first flight out in the morning however.

A short while later, we heard that the brakes had also come off while fixing the tire, so there was no way this plane was going to be fixed anytime soon since they’d need stuff which was only going to be available in Denver. So, the flight take off time, scheduled for 1:35 PM was now looking at 7:15 PM or so. The agent was honest and asked to call AA Reservations to rebook on the 4:55 PM flight, since they were not going to be able to handle all the load themselves.

I managed to get across to the Executive Platinum line, and they rebooked me onto the 4:55 PM flight, that too getting me in First again. However, I was now supposed to be sleeping at DFW and going to New York next morning.

I decided that sleeping was going to be a waste of time so I’d rather keep moving. Hence, once in Dallas, I called again, and tried to get on a more sane routing, which meant flying on the next plane from Dallas to Los Angeles, and then going on the red eye from LAX to New York JFK. That means, a simple thing like going to New York now looks like this routing.

So, I just got off coach in DFW-LAX, where they were asking for volunteers for a bump and offering $500 to stay over the night, and off I go on the 3-class LAX-JFK redeye where business class upgrade has been confirmed. However, I’m right now in the LAX Admirals club, and this beast is teasing me to go to Australia. I think I’ll just head out to board for JFK instead.

Laters!!

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While I am an Executive Platinum and so AA is not sending me out the invitation to Concierge Key, not yet at least, they seemed to have fired out a lot of emails offering targeted status to various American Airlines flyers.

It seems AA flyers with no status have received a promotion to sign up for instant Gold status, and they get complimentary status till August 31, 2013 + 10 500-mile upgrades (just for registering!!). If they earn 6000 miles or points during April 29 and August 31, 2013, they get to keep the status till February 28, 2015. The flying needs to be on AA, BA, IB, QF and JA.

Some flyers have reported that they have received a similar platinum offer, where they have been offered 20 500-mile upgrades just to sign up, and if they earn 12,000 miles or points between now and August 31, 2013, they get to keep the status till February 28, 2015.

What’s more, there is EXP status for grabs as well for lucky few, who have been asked to fly just about 30,000 miles (or 30K EQPs) on the above airlines to keep the status till February 2015. Once they complete the 30K target, they receive the 8 eVIPs as well.

Loyalty Lobby has the details on all the T&C on his blog, which you may want to read up if interested. Also, there is a FlyerTalk thread which is discussing the mystery potion used to target flyers.

It turns out to be a very generous offer from American, and I can’t for the life of me figure out why would they offer status for lesser benchmarks like these. In case you’ve been targeted, do let me know if you’re up for the challenge or not?

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I know AAdvantageGeek already gave us all an advance notice that the new look of American Airlines would be revealed today, but today I got a mail from American Airlines stating that they will do an online microsite as well, which goes live at 0900 hours Central time at www.aa.com/newamerican. That is where I will be headed to check out the inauguration today. Hop on if you’re a fan!

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