[Shrubbery]

Hi all

I'm writing because I'm wondering what kind of compensation I deserve to get from AA due to missing a connecting flight because of a mechanical issue on a previous one. Here's what I wrote initially to AA's website:

Our flight from Chicago to Miami was delayed causing us to miss our flight from Miami to Manaus. We weren't given the option of catching the flight nor informed our connecting flight would leave w/o us. Since we landed @ 5:15pm, we could have caught our flight, delaying it no more than 30mins!

My wife is a dentist who had a full day of patients scheduled July 1. Due to the delay, she lost the money she was to earn & her reputation called into question. She already is booked up over 2 weeks, so patients scheduled for July 1 had to be rescheduled more than 2 weeks later, if they didn't cancel.

Several AA personnel were unhelpful, including the gate attendant who told us to go to the ticketing desk instead of rebooking desk; the woman @ rebooking desk who said no earlier flights were available than 24 hours later & never gave us vouchers to make an international phone call to my wife's family; & several personnel we spoke w/the next morning who were clueless as to who could provide reimbursement (in person) for our troubles, including the int'l phone call from the hotel.

As an American living in Brazil, I'll make trips to the US each year. So what assurance can AA give that this won't happen again? What further compensation will AA make for our losses besides the wages my wife lost, the int'l phone bill & cost of things ruined by the delay?

To fill in some additional details, when the gate numbers were called out over the PA system during the flight for all connecting flights they skipped on to the next city without saying a word about Manaus, although there was a hesitation before they went on to the next city (so it's clear that the attendants knew we wouldn't catch our flight). Not only were we not given the option of catching the flight, not one flight attendant came up to us to let us know our flight would be leaving without us. It was only when we got off the plane and approached an AA gate attendant that we found out our flight had left without us. And as I mentioned in my e-mail to them, they could have held the plane for us so that we could have boarded it, delaying it no more than 30 minutes.

When booking us on a new flight, the woman at the rebooking desk told us that the next flight from Miami to Manaus was going to be 1 full day later. When we asked if there were any other airlines that had earlier flights than that, she said there were not. When my wife specifically asked if TAM Airlines had any flights leaving earlier, she told us no, which we later discovered on our own was untrue. After rebooking our flight, she gave us meal vouchers with ridiculously low values - $7 per person for breakfast and $12 per person for lunch and dinner. When we expressed our disappointment, she told us that the voucher values were the standard provided by AA. Beyond the meal vouchers, we were not asked or offered anything else - the only thing we were told was that we could call a 1-800 number to see if any flights opened up. When we asked about getting our luggage, we were told to go to baggage claim.

The baggage claim employee we spoke with told us that it would probably take between 2 to 8 hours to get our luggage, and that there was no guarantee that we would actually get them. So we were stuck wearing the same clothes we had been wearing all day, with no toiletries since we had to pack them in our luggage. 4 blocks of cheese that we had frozen and packed in our luggage (which would still have been fine had we arrived home on time) were ruined since they weren't refrigerated overnight.

At our hotel, we had to make a call to my wife's family in Manaus to let them know we would not be on that flight, to explain why and to ask them to take care of things for us at our home and my wife's dental office until we returned. Our cell phone didn't allow for us to make international calls, so we had to call using the phone in our hotel room. The phone call took only 14 minutes, but we later were informed by the front desk that we now had a bill on our account for $201.89 ($176.03 for the call plus $25.86 in tax)! It should be noted that when we later were speaking to an AA representative at the airport in Manaus about our experience, he was surprised that we were not provided with any sort of vouchers for phone calls at the rebooking desk in Miami.

We also jumped online to see if there were any other direct flights from Miami to Manaus that would be leaving earlier than 5:20pm on July 1st, and sure enough, TAM did have a flight leaving at 8:25am. We called the AA 1-800 number that we were given at the rebooking desk and asked about being booked onto the TAM flight instead. The lady we spoke with was extremely helpful and did as we asked, answering all of our questions.

The following morning we arrived early at the airport so that we could try to get our unexpected expenses compensated by AA in person instead of having to do so over the internet. We spoke with an AA supervisor (as identified by an AA employee) about our situation, and she told us to get into a special line for checking people in. We did, but when it was our turn (after waiting in line for half an hour), the woman we spoke with told us that she couldn't help us and that we should speak with the gentleman a several desks down who was another supervisor and that he could help us. When we spoke with him, he told us he had no ability to provide any sort of reimbursement and that we would have to do so online. So we wasted the better part of an hour and accomplished nothing. It would have been nice if we would have been told immediately that there was nothing that could be done, instead of sending us on a wild goose chase!

From that point on, we made our way down to the international terminal to check in with TAM and were provided with service far better than we had received within the last 12 hours with AA, from the time we checked in to the time we arrived in Manaus.

In short, we expected to be reimbursed and/or compensated for:
• $500.00 - what my wife would have earned that day
• $197.69 - the balance of the phone call we had to make to Brazil (the hotel used the remaining $4.20 from one of our meal vouchers towards the cost of the phone call)
• $24.43 - the cost of the 4 bricks of cheese that were ruined
• the time wasted and the hassles we had to deal with due to AA's lack of consideration

Thus far, I've used AA's website and been in contact with a representative who at best is giving us a voucher for $500 towards a future flight, one that will be sent in the mail (which I fear will get lost, knowing how the postal system is here in Brazil). I've tried to reason with him that we deserve more reimbursement than that, but he's not budging. So is there anything else worth trying to do or should we just give up?

Thanks in advance for any help and suggestions you can give!

[jimworcs]

This story is a classic example of how the airline industry operates. It treats customers like pawns in a game of chess. You were lied to, passed from piller to post and treated very badly.

However, I think you have unreasonable expectations if you think that airlines will be responsible for consequential damages for the loss of income, caused by delays. Just imagine the potential costs of that... let's say an airline was operating an Airbus A380 on a route and it was delayed in similar circumstances to your situation. If 500 passengers submitted claims for $500, that would cost $250,000 per flight every time it was delayed. If you imagine how many flights each airline operates, the numbers would become utterly unmanageable. The truth is, if your claim succeeded, it would bankrupt the industry.

Your experience of airline employees lying to you, telling you whatever they need to say to get you away from their desk and generally messing you around is highly typical of the industry generally. It makes your blood boil and make demands to be compensated not just for your losses, but also which reflects the need to make the airline take responsbility. I don't think you will get a better offer than a $500 voucher, if this is a genuine offer. If you fly often, I would go for that. If you prefer not to fly with them again I think the best you could go for would be the cost of the phone call, but even then, I think you are not likely to succeed. Airlines are most reluctant to pay actual cash compensation.

As for the cheese... perishable goods in checked bags.... you gambled and lost on no delays... I can't imagine them paying out on that.

Frustrating as it is, I would probably take their offer, use it for my next flight and then never fly AA again. It is almost never better to fly US based airlines to international destinations. The standards of service have falled so rapidly, they are no longer capable of matching the service standards of even mediocre international carriers.

[Shrubbery]

Hi Jim

thank you for your response and advice. I did in fact receive a voucher in the mail already, although I still need to figure out how I'm going to use it (looks similar to a check that I'll likely have to mail in).

As for your point about having to reimburse everyone, I get it, but you can be sure that if what happened to us and 498 other individuals, they would be paying a lot to make up for their miserable service! Anyway, I figured that there wasn't much more I could do before accepting their paltry offer, but I thought I'd ask. Definitely going to keep this in mind in the future, especially the point about avoiding flying on US-based carriers in the future. Like I said, TAM treated us so much better. The difference in service was unbelievable.

Thanks again for your post!

[AADFW]

I agree with Jim but would just add that common sense dictates that one should go to the nearest 7-11 or gas station and buy a pre-paid international calling card when staying at a hotel. That to OP did not do so is not the airline's fault. I think the voucher that AA has offered in this situation is probably appropriate, although given that their change fees are climbing higher and higher it would be nice to see compensation on the order of $1,000 vouchers for situations such as this. Only seems fair.

[Shrubbery]

Originally Posted by AADFW

I agree with Jim but would just add that common sense dictates that one should go to the nearest 7-11 or gas station and buy a pre-paid international calling card when staying at a hotel. That to OP did not do so is not the airline's fault.

That may have been common sense to you, but I had never had anything like this happen before and had done my best at the rebooking desk to think of what I would need. At that moment, the thought never crossed my mind about having to make the phone call to Brazil. Perhaps that's my fault for not doing so, but the lady at the rebooking desk, who's no doubt had to deal with this sort of thing numerous times before should have known better to offer whatever vouchers are needed in these situations, instead of expecting me to spell everything out to her. So I still hold AA responsible for that - it was their fault I missed my flight, not mine and they should have accommodated me for whatever I needed due to their error without me having to make sure every detail was accounted for.

[sturuk]

Originally Posted by jimworcs

This story is a classic example of how the airline industry operates. It treats customers like pawns in a game of chess. You were lied to, passed from piller to post and treated very badly.

However, I think you have unreasonable expectations if you think that airlines will be responsible for consequential damages for the loss of income, caused by delays. Just imagine the potential costs of that... let's say an airline was operating an Airbus A380 on a route and it was delayed in similar circumstances to your situation. If 500 passengers submitted claims for $500, that would cost $250,000 per flight every time it was delayed. If you imagine how many flights each airline operates, the numbers would become utterly unmanageable. The truth is, if your claim succeeded, it would bankrupt the industry.

Your experience of airline employees lying to you, telling you whatever they need to say to get you away from their desk and generally messing you around is highly typical of the industry generally. It makes your blood boil and make demands to be compensated not just for your losses, but also which reflects the need to make the airline take responsbility. I don't think you will get a better offer than a $500 voucher, if this is a genuine offer. If you fly often, I would go for that. If you prefer not to fly with them again I think the best you could go for would be the cost of the phone call, but even then, I think you are not likely to succeed. Airlines are most reluctant to pay actual cash compensation.

As for the cheese... perishable goods in checked bags.... you gambled and lost on no delays... I can't imagine them paying out on that.

Frustrating as it is, I would probably take their offer, use it for my next flight and then never fly AA again. It is almost never better to fly US based airlines to international destinations. The standards of service have falled so rapidly, they are no longer capable of matching the service standards of even mediocre international carriers.

My advice to you is, use the voucher if you can, and never fly AA again. They are the worst of the worst, in my opinion!