1) Has anyone flown American Airlines before? What are they like?
2) I recall hearing horror stories about having to change flights at Chicago O'hare. Is it a bad airport to go through?
Currently this is looking like my best compromise for cost and arrival time. The cheaper option would only get me to Wisconsin at 10pm on the Thursday night, after departing the UK early in the morning (somewhere in this option is a horrendously long stopover, I think). Whereas with the AA flight I can get there are about 3.30pm and thus enjoy my day a bit more, including GOH readings.
I consider most domestic airlines equally sucky. American is not really any better/worse than others.
Chicago is a fine airport to go through and your likeliest option for Madison, WI. I have not had any more trouble in Chicago than I have elsewhere. One nice thing about Chicago is that, if you had to, you could rent a car and drive to Madison. Although I don't recommend it, of course.
I've flown with AA to and from Gatwick on literally dozens of occasions in the past ten years, never had any trouble. Your mileage may vary, of course, but hey.
Can't say anything about Chicago, however, as most of the time I flew into DFW stateside.
Woefully, I'd be flying from Heathrow. (This is particularly woeful because I live 15 mins' drive from Gatwick. At least it'd be Terminal 3 and not 5.) But I imagine any difference in AA from the two airports would be down to the airport.
I've flown American before with no trouble, but they've had some problems recently with grounded flights because of planes that didn't pass their safety inspection. I assume it's resolved now, but they had to cancel hundreds of flights and it took days for them to catch up. I don't know if I'd call them unreliable at the moment, but it would give me pause before booking with them if I had a comparable alternative.
Thanks for the info. I'd be surprised if that's still a problem by the end of May, unless a new problem crops up, but I'll double-check there's no other airline.
What everyone else has said. AA isn't any better or worse than any of the other major carriers, and Chicago isn't any better or worse than the other major hubs. My flight to Madison does the Chicago flight-switchover thing too: it's pretty common. Just try to schedule a couple of hours for layover if you can, that way if there's a delay in one of the legs, it doesn't really affect the overall trip.
I'm flying Air India (booked from Southall Travel) from Heathrow to Chicago O'Hare on Tuesday; I'm scheduled to land at 3:30pm US time, at which point I embark on an epic 3.5 hour bus ride to get to Madison. Although this makes for rather a long day, it was the cheapest option I could find.
I avoided flying in to Madison as a) price, and b) some friends who went last year had some problems with the internal connecting flight. I haven't heard anything bad about O'Hare specifically, though.
From what I've heard, Chicago often has weather problems which has caused people problems with their connecting flights on the way to Wiscon. On the other hand, Madison airport is a nice little airport, easy to get through and not far from town, so I think it's worth the risk. We've driven once and flown once (changing in Detroit, I think), and I'd go with flying any time (even though I think flying is eviiilll).
You took my hand and led me down to watch a papillon parade, and we let the kittens lick our hair and drink our chalky lemonade. You squeezed my hand and told me softly that I shouldn't be afraid 'cause all the while your finger's resting gently on the masterfade, the masterfade.
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