TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums St. Maarten - St. Martin AA Experience 10-16

On 10-16-20 we flew AA from DFW-MIA-SXM. Starting 24 hours prior to our flight We tried to check in online at aa.com. We tried several times on different computers, browsers and the aa app. All to no avail. Each time it told us we had to check in with an agent at the airport. A call to AA customer service yielded no answers. At the airport we were told it was due to the SXM travel requirements and they had to see our travel authorization and negative COVID-19 tests. Once reviewed we were issued boarding passes. We had a very tight connection in MIA that got tighter due to departing DFW 20 minutes late. The pilot made up 10 of those minutes. We were fortunate to land at gate 51 and depart at Gate 49. Upon arrival at Gate 49 they were already boarding. There were two lines. One line at the counter and another boarding. We entered the boarding line since our paperwork had already been checked. Wrong!!! We had to go back to the line at the counter and have our paperwork checked again before being allowed to board. It seemed redundant to have to have it checked both in Dallas and Miami. As others have said, our paperwork was checked again upon arrival before being allowed to go through immigration.

Well, that's disturbing. Our AA flights have been changed, shortening our connection time in CLT to 48 minutes. I agree that checking your paperwork once should be enough.

Thanks for the report. I think that AA is just like all of us, trying to figure out what the heck they are supposed to do during this situation.

I hope you are able to provide us a little good news from the island, for all of us who are just living vicariously through the few trip reports that have been posted.

We must be on the same flights GaKaye. I sure hope they get it sorted out before December.

Our flight out of CLT was originally at 9:35, which gave us over an hour to connect; now it's at 9:05. The 9:35 flight is still showing, but I'll bet one or the other of those flights gets canceled. I just don't see AA operating two non-stops thirty minutes apart. My biggest fear is missing that connection, which would render our tests out of date, and we'd have to start over. Either that, or getting put on a later flight the same day, losing our first class seats, and being stuck in middle seats in the back of the plane. I'm trying not to stress over it, but our experience over the past couple of years hasn't been that great.

We flew out of MIA on 10/2. Had to show our negative Covid test and the paper authorizing us to enter SXM at the ticket counter. The ticket agent put a red checkmark on our boarding pass. Once we got to our departure gate, there was an announcement that everyone would need to show the Covid and entry paperwork to the AA agent at the gate, before boarding. We stood in line, showed our docs and were told "you already have the red checkmark on your boarding pass, so you are good to go". Maybe the second line was unnecessary. I'm not really sure...