I have a friend named Rich Bowen who is known for having, well, let’s say adventures when traveling. So much so that we’ve created a new unit of measurement called “the Bowen” to indicate just how wrong a particular trip went. I just racked up a bunch of Bowens on a trip using American Airlines.

TL;DR; I am an American Airlines loyalist but this last trip really put that loyalty to the test. They are obviously having issues with their new 787-900 planes and this is negatively impacting customers. I still plan to default to AA (I have at least four more trips this year and have booked three of them on that airline so far) but if I had other options I’m at the point I would consider them.

I’ve been using American Airlines as my primary carrier for decades. Before moving I used to fly out of Raleigh-Durham (RDU) and that airport was once an AA hub, and I guess I’ve just gotten used to them. The only other carrier of consequence is Delta (United just doesn’t have much of a presence) and most of my friends who travel are loyal to them. I’ve enjoyed those trips I’ve taken on Delta but I really like the people at American, and since I have such a history with AA I figured I would always use them if it made sense.

Now this isn’t to say that I haven’t had issues with American before this last trip, but this one was the most disappointing.

I told my boss at the beginning of the year that I wanted to greatly cut back my travel in 2025, and then from the last week in January until mid-May managed to travel 12 weeks out of 15, including five international trips. That said, this past trip was my first in a few months.

I wasn’t expecting any more international trips the year, but I got the chance to attend and speak at NixCon, which was being held just outside of Zürich, Switzerland. I’ll post about that conference on my work blog in a bit, but once I’d decided to go I started looking for a good route using American Airlines.

Since I’ve moved I have two main airports I use: Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) and Piedmont Triad International (GSO). Both have a strong AA presence (CLT is a hub). From door to door CLT is 90 minutes from home and GSO is 50 minutes (and zero stoplights), but I often make the trip to CLT just because they have more direct options. Direct flights are less impacted by delays (you don’t have to worry about missing a connection) and since GSO is a regional airport, half the time I get routed through CLT anyway.

This means that if I were to connect through CLT versus driving there, I’d need to build in at least an hour for the connection, have a 45 minute (gate to gate) flight and then still drive 50 minutes home. It’s just easier to drive the extra 40 minutes to Charlotte and not worry about it.

But I like GSO so much I am very happy when I can use it, and since there wasn’t a direct flight to ZRH I booked GSO to Philadelphia (PHL) and then on to Switzerland.

Another cool thing that happened when I was planning this trip is that American announced that they had “upgraded” the cabin on certain new aircraft, including the 787-900 I was to take from PHL. In Business Class they added little doors to the standard seat “pods” and called them Flagship Suite® Seats.

Immediately I was intrigued, and I have to admit a bit skeptical. The top tier of commercial airline travel is the private suite, and while they include a door they also tend to include walls (grin). I wasn’t sure what value having a little “half” door would add as people can still just look over it as they walk by, but I was eager to experience it for myself.

My employer, however, does not pay for business class airfare so I knew that I would need to use my status to get to use it. I earn a perk called a “systemwide upgrade” that would allow me to get to business class, but they are precious so I only used one on the return trip from Zürich.

Spoiler alert: I never got to experience it.

My trip started out smoothly enough. I drove to GSO, checked a bag (I was going to be gone 8 days which is a bit much for a carry on), and breezed through security. GSO does not have an Admiral’s Club lounge but they used to, and I think it was closed during the pandemic. I really enjoy my Club access (I have another post on the credit card I use to get it) and while GSO is clean and quiet I sometimes stare longingly at the now empty door of the old lounge.

The flight to PHL went without a hitch. It was on an Embrarer 145 which is a single class aircraft where you have to gate check any large carry on bag, but as I was just traveling with a backpack it fit in the small overhead bins.

The downside of this part of the trip was a seven hour layover. I’ve heard people complain about PHL, but as an airport I like it. They often have macarons in the lounge and while it is really long airport it is pretty easy to get around. The main issue I have with PHL is that I tend to have adventures every time I fly through it.

I walked from the F terminal to the A terminal (international departures) and checked in to the Admiral’s Club. For some reason I rated access to the new “Flagship” lounge, which is an Admiral’s Club with some upscale offerings.

Not a bad place to have to spend a long layover.

I found a table on which to camp while waiting for my flight and I checked out the food offerings. Often an Admiral’s Club will have some food on offer, but the Flagship lounges tend to go a little over the top. For example, one dish I tried was “squid ink biscuits with speck ham and brown mustard”.

I only have three complaints about the lounge (heh, I know #firstworldproblems). Like many of the lounges these days, it did get crowded as flight time approached and more people came to the club. There weren’t any unruly children running about and everyone took it in stride but it does take something away when a club gets packed.

The other issue was there wasn’t enough “down market” food. Sometimes all I want is a cookie or some pretzels, and that wasn’t an option. I did try a spicy nut mix but it was too spicy for someone about to spend nine hours on a plane. Plus, no macarons.

Finally, while the lounge was nice it didn’t hold a candle to the Flagship lounge in Chicago. Now that place is top-tier.

Since I had some time I worked on finalizing my meetings in Switzerland. I was staying until Thursday since I had a lunch meeting on Monday and was planning another meeting on Tuesday. The flight back through PHL doesn’t run on Wednesday so I decided to visit my employer’s office in the city on that day and fly home the day after.

It turns out I needed to move my Tuesday lunch to a Monday dinner, which freed me up to return on Tuesday. I called American to see if such a change were possible (the lounge team can’t help with changes that aren’t “same day”) and was told that since I was in the middle of the outbound trip I would have to call when I got to Zürich. No biggie, and I was only going to change if I could still experience the suite and if it didn’t cost anything.

At least one of my three readers, by this point, is asking “But what about the Bowens? This doesn’t sound too bad”.

If you manage to click through to the article about the new seat upgrades, you’ll notice that this included the rest of the plane. While I wasn’t in business class on the outbound flight, I was interested in trying out the new seats, but when I got to 17D I saw it was covered in tape.

The tray table on this brand new plane was broken, and I wouldn’t have use of a tray table on this long flight.

Okay, things happen but this is a brand new plane, and it had been sitting at PHL for almost 24 hours before the flight so my assumption was that it should have been fixed in that time. As I was to learn, American is still trying to figure out how to maintain this new equipment and the result was no table for me.

One thing that bothers me about American is that other airlines are really quick with the apology, usually in the form of frequent flyer miles, when customers experience problems like this. I mean, I have no status with Delta but once when I experienced a minor inconvenience they added 5000 miles to my account.

What I got was a rather (unusually) surly gate agent who, in her defense, did come to see me without prompting, but I was told that my choice was to remain in my seat or move over to the middle seat (which was the only empty seat available at the time I boarded).

I chose aisle seats for a reason, mainly because I’m getting older and I need to visit the lavatory a bit more frequently than I used to, especially on long flights. I decided to stay in my seat and live with it.

The middle seat was taken by an American pilot who was going to Europe on vacation. He was amazing, and is an example of why I keep flying AA. He offered to switch with me if I changed my mind, and I learned a lot about flying for American on the trip. We talked about the newness of the 787-900 and I asked about the “suite” doors: are they actually useful or were just a gimmick? He said that they did add to the feeling of privacy but customers weren’t used to them, yet, so they would often try to force them closed when they were locked for takeoff and landing, and this would cause them to break for the rest of the flight. I made a note of that for my return trip.

I am not proud to admit that I was ready to go full Karen. I was tired and extremely disappointed to miss the full use of my seat, but to be honest it wasn’t that hard eating on my lap.

Plus the pilot (one of my new favorite people) had me place my tray on top of his when we were both finished so I didn’t have to sit with it before the crew had time to clean up.

The flight itself was fine and when I got to Switzerland and had time to call about changing the return. It was a fairly painless process to get on the Tuesday flight and it didn’t cost anything to switch.

I’ll write up about the trip itself in a different post, but it was amazing. This was my first time on the “German” side of the country and it was beautiful. The people were incredible and the event was a lot of fun.

Jump forward to Tuesday and I’m ready for my “suite” experience. I was out late on my final night in Switzerland and got up early to get to the airport, and the check-in experience went smoothly and I was through security and immigration in no time.

There is no Admiral’s Club at ZRH but I was given access to the “Primeclass” lounge where I was able to get a little breakfast and get ready for the nine hour flight to Philadelphia. The lounge was near the departing gate (E35) so I waited a bit later than normal to head out but I still got there in time to hear an announcement that our departure would be delayed by a few minutes due to “a maintenance issue”.

For any frequent traveler this is the indication that it is about to rain Bowens.

Just for time scale, we were supposed to board around 11:00, and this first delay pushed our departure out until after noon. I wasn’t too worried since I had a five hour layover in PHL so even a significant delay would still give me a chance to make it home that day.

It wasn’t to be.

The first official delay had us leaving at 13:00 so I went back to the lounge for a little bit. When I returned to the gate the signs still showed a 13:00 departure, and even though we were well past that the time was never updated. I didn’t want to go back to the lounge, or to do anything else really, for fear that I would miss boarding when it did happen.

Just before 14:00 we got an update that the flight would be departing at 14:45. I knew this wasn’t going to happen since it takes around an hour to get nearly 300 people into a plane, but I figured maybe we would be close to that time.

Nope. It got pushed out to 15:15, and then 16:54.

At this point I was certain they were going to cancel the flight. There was no way I was going to make the connection in PHL so I went ahead and booked a hotel in Philadelphia.

I have to admit I was surprised when they announced that boarding would begin (a cheer rose up from the folks waiting at the gate). At least I would get back to the US that day, and there are a number of flights from PHL to GSO so I would get home the next day, and I’d still get to experience the new seat.

My first impression was that it was much smaller than I thought it would be, but of course, I had yet to put the seat through its paces. I was divided on the new color scheme. The materials felt high quality and I liked how the pale wood contrasted with the grey but at first glance the wood finish looked a little cheap. Like many business class seats this one had a shoulder strap to be used for takeoff and landing, so I put it on as we pulled away from the gate.

As I’ve mentioned many times, I fly American for the people and this flight was no different. One of the flight attendants I talked with mentioned the issues they were having with the new Boeing aircraft. She was unsure of why we were being delayed only that it was a problem with the “power”. I wasn’t sure if that meant the auxiliary power units (APUs), the electricity in the cabin or the engine itself, and she didn’t have any more details. When I told her about the broken tray table at 17D she laughed and said it was still broken.

Then came the dreaded announcement that we were headed back to the gate. (sigh) I knew then that we were not going to make it to Philadelphia so I went ahead and canceled the hotel I booked and managed to book a room at the Hyatt at the Zürich airport.

When I left the plane I got in line with about 300 of my new friends. This flight doesn’t run on Wednesdays and there just isn’t a way to put 300 people into an already busy flight network, so I was certain they would get this new Boeing plane repaired eventually. This equipment isn’t cheap and every moment a plane spends without people in it is money the airline is losing. I figured they would cancel the flight, fix it overnight and we’d be scheduled to leave first thing in the morning.

Which is what happened.

I stayed in line until we were told that our bags would be unloaded at baggage claim. This isn’t always a sure thing, sometimes they won’t return the bags, and when I check a bag I always travel with everything I need for an extra night in my backpack, but it was still nice to be able to get it. I wasn’t worried about having to wait to rebook since American is usually very good at doing that automatically once your travel gets disrupted.

I headed down to baggage claim, which meant going through immigration again to re-enter the country. The immigration officer didn’t seem too surprised that I was coming back several hours after I left, as I assume this isn’t a super-rare occurrence. Our bags were supposed to come out on a specific carousel, so I waited while the rest of the people on the flight started to trickle in to the area. At some point in time the flight number disappeared from the screen, but I didn’t think to much about it.

After waiting for about 45 minutes, a door opened and one of those little baggage train thingies came in carrying all of our bags (they didn’t use the belt). Our belt was next to “lost and found” so perhaps they were just going to drop it off there. I may have jumped the line but I travel with fairly unique luggage and when my bag came by on the little cart I just grabbed it and headed out of the airport.

By this time I’m tired, I’m frustrated and I’m starting to get a headache. I had called the hotel, the Hyatt Regency, to ask about the best way to get there and they said they were just outside of the airport across from baggage claim.

At ZRH there is a fancy shopping center called The Circle so I followed signs for the Hyatt. It was pretty upscale, with some nice-looking restaurants and even a place selling itty-bitty electric cars.

There was also a Formula 1 racing simulator but I had arrived just after they had closed.

When I finally navigated the maze to get to the Hyatt, it seemed a bit more modern, a little more hip, than I was expecting. It took me while to find check-in as it was hard to separate from the bar, the restaurant and the rest of the lobby in general. Someone had to point me to the right place.

The guy at the desk looked up my name and told me there was good news and bad news, and ask which did I want to hear first. Ever the stoic I said “bad news” and he said that they didn’t have a room for me. The “good news” was that it was because I was at the wrong hotel. I was at the Hyatt Place and not the Hyatt Regency.

(sigh)

He told me an easy way to get to the right hotel (about a five minute walk) so I got there and got checked in. It was a nice room (much nicer than the hotel I stayed at in the city proper) and all I wanted by this time was to grab dinner and get some sleep.

I ate dinner at a sushi bar in The Circle and then went looking for a grocery or convenience store where I could buy a soda and a little snack for in the morning. Of course they were all closed, so I went back to the Hyatt where they had a small market area. I grabbed a Coke Zero and a cookie but found out I couldn’t pay at the market and, according to the sign, I had to go to the front desk. There was a bit of a line so I waited about 15 minutes and then was told, no, to pay I had to go to the bar.

(sigh)

I went to the bar, waited again for about five minutes, and that guy told me I had to go to the front desk. At this point I just put everything back in the marketplace and went up to my room.

The joys of travel.

So here is the status at this point. It is about 21:00 on Tuesday night, and our flight is scheduled to leave the next morning at 10:30.

It will arrive in PHL a little after 13:00 and my flight to GSO leaves at 15:49, getting me home about 17:30. I called Andrea to catch up and then went to sleep.

I woke up and while it felt like I had slept through the night, it had only been about three hours. I checked my phone and it turns out they have “cancelled” the 10:30 flight and rescheduled it for noon. Of course, a noon departure means that I can’t make the connection in PHL, so time to call American.

I was connected with an agent named Goldie, and I told her my problem. She told me that there was no availability on any later flight to GSO on Wednesday, but she could get me on a flight Thursday. I asked her if I had any other options, and she spent about an hour getting me on a route from ZRH to Madrid (MAD) on Iberia (leaving at 07:30), from MAD to Dallas (DFW) and then from DFW to GSO landing a little after 22:00.

Book it.

This meant I had to get up in about three hours to start this process again, and that I would not get to try out the new suite seats, but at least I would get home.

I woke up, showered, checked out, and made my way to the Iberia counter. They checked in my bag and told me how to get to another lounge called the Aspire, as in my case the aspiration was to actually get home.

I went through security and found the lounge. Since I was going to an EU country there was no immigration as that will be done in MAD. When I checked in at Aspire the lady told me that I was “the one they were looking for” and that she needed to call the Iberia counter, eventually handing me the phone.

The man I had talked with when I checked in told me that, for some reason, there was no ticket number associated with my flight, even though I had seats and a boarding pass. While there was a slight language barrier, I was told I would need to contact American Airlines and get that corrected, come back out to the front counter to get new boarding passes and a new bag tag, and then go back through security.

Easier said than done.

I was pretty close to security so I went to see if they would just let my back out the way I came in. Nope. I had to go to baggage claim and then back out to the front and, by the way, baggage claim doesn’t open until 06:00 and while I could get to the baggage claim area I wouldn’t be able to leave until it opened (it is about 05:15 at this point). A pain but easy enough, except that I couldn’t find baggage claim. Rarely do airports point to the exit right after you come in, and I ended up asking at least three people for directions before I found it. Coincidentally it was right near the lounge.

(sigh)

As it wasn’t open it was very calm and quiet down by the belts, so I used the time to call American. It took the agent a little while to figure out what went wrong, but she confirmed that there was no ticket number associated with my trip at this point. About 35 minutes later everything was sorted out just as I made my way back to my starting point. She had me write down the ticket number (13 digits) and I’m glad she did because I needed it for the folks at the Iberia counter. I received new boarding passes and a new bag tag (my bag was waiting to be loaded at the plane but due to the ticket issue it wouldn’t scan with the old tag).

This left me with just enough time to go back through security to catch the plane to Madrid.

If anyone is still reading this, I am almost done. There was just one more anxiety inducing part to the trip, but that didn’t happen until I got to DFW.

The flight from ZRH to MAD was issue-free. While my systemwide upgrade doesn’t work on partner airlines, I was in “business” class on this flight.

European business class always amuses me. Unlike flights in the US, where first/business uses a different and larger seat, European business class is in the same seat as economy, but they block the middle seat and serve you better food. The number of business class seat available is mostly determined by demand, and I’ve been on some flights where business class was half the plane.

Once at Madrid I went through customs and made my way to the international concourse. It was a bit of a walk but I had time. The flight to DFW boarded right on time, and while the seats on a 777-200 aren’t the fancy new ones, they are familiar and comfortable for the 10+ hour flight.

This routing is definitely far from optimal, as I have to go 2.5 hours farther west than I where I live, but if it meant I got home I didn’t care. I did look at the flight I was supposed to be on and, surprise surprise it was late leaving, but it did eventually get to PHL but there was no way I was making that connection had I taken it.

The flight I was on was delayed about 30 minutes as well, which meant my connection would be tight. I was lucky in that both the arriving and departing flights would be in Terminal D, but I still had to go through immigration, reclaim and recheck my bag, go back through security and find my gate.

I have Global Entry so immigration was a breeze. It is all facial recognition now so I got my face scanned and then the CPB agent just called my name and waved me through. No passport needed.

Baggage claim took longer than I would have liked, but I was able to get my bag and re-check it before hitting security and going back into Terminal D. The GSO flight was out of gate D1, and that turned out to be a 30 minute walk as it is in a different zip code than the rest of the airport. Seriously, you come in to the terminal around Gate D27 and Gate D1 is so far away I can’t get it to fit on a map where it will also show the labels.

I was in Group 1 and got to the gate just as they called Group 4.

The last thing to check was to open the AA app and insure that my bag had been loaded on the plane. I pretty much napped on that final leg, got my bag and drove home, arriving around 23:30.

Look, I have three million or more “in seat” miles flying, and stuff happens. You have weather, traffic and all kinds of other issues but I have a problem forgiving carriers for maintenance delays. Any top tier airline should have the staff and resources to make sure these planes can fly safely and with minimum issues. The fact that American wouldn’t address the issue with the tray table in seat 17D in over a week’s time makes me wonder what other issues they can’t address and if any of those are more serious than a broken seat. Pair this with my excitement at being able to experience the new seats and being disappointed further added to my frustration.

People who have bad experiences with companies will often swear them off and threaten to switch to a competitor. I know because I am one of them, but I’ve spent decades building status with American and I’m too old to switch now, and I try not to make empty threats. I most likely won’t switch. But this experience did push me closer to considering Delta, the only real option for me, but I’m not there … yet. Despite the agents screwing up my flight change by not attaching the ticket number, almost every interaction with AA staff I had was great, and even though the planes could use some work it is the people that will keep me flying American.

I want to stress that I know these are all #firstworldproblems and modern air travel is downright amazing. I had a great time on this trip and air travel was the only way it was made possible, but it could have been much more pleasant if it had gone more smoothly.

Oh, so let’s total up those Bowens, shall we? Remember that Bowens are kind of like soccer goals, they should be hard to get, and a trip with 2+ Bowens is not a good time.

Yeah, that’s probably a record Bowen count for me.