[nur]

I was schedule to flight Miami-Sao Paulo on March 13th. I was coming from Vancouver and our flight was delayed in Dallas due to stormy weather conditions. I missed flight 907 but knowing that there is two more flights that night I was not worried.

As soon as I arrived to Miami I was put on the latest flight to SP departing at 11:20 PM. To my surprise and frustration (My odyssey started at 6:00 AM in Vancouver) my flight Miami -Sao Paulo f was cancelled due to “technical problems”. Suspicious enough the plane was a 777 and we were not too many passengers...(I learned later on at the hotel that every day the hotel receives 30 stranded passengers from American Airlines and the women in charge of a snack bar at the airport, confirmed that American cancels flights very often)The line grew enormous and slow in order to get vouchers that included hotel and meals. My major complaint was that AA ground staff is not prepared to deal with these kind of situations. Most of the passengers did not speak English and the only AA staff that spoke Portuguese was at the Miami/Buenos Aires flight!!! I know that I’m in an English speaking country but at least one AA staff should have explained in Portuguese or in very slow English what happened and what would be the steps to follow after our flight cancellation. I assumed that responsibility because I realized that some passengers were lost without no indication whatsoever of what was going on. For assuming that position-to help other passengers- I was mistreated by AA personnel as if I was disturbing their work!! They told me that there was nothing to do, that they could not endorsed any flight because other companies flights were sold out, that TAM(Brazilian airline) was closed-like there was not internet connection with them working together as we know???-

They gave meal vouchers :

$US 10 for dinner????
$US 5 for breakfast????? (at the hotel breakfast cost $US 12, price that according to Miami standards is very cheap!)
$US 10 for lunch

Result: no proper dinner and the use of 2 voucher to pay only for breakfast

My biggest complain is the lack of customer relations skills by the staff. It is free to be nice and considerate to people. What could do the passenger that was scheduled to open a congress the following day? ..or the passenger that had to pay his employees the next day??
We should follow the example of European airlines that are fined euros for overbooking, flight cancellations and technical or schedule reasons.
For more info on this, please consult the web at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4271197.stm

(By the way… if you do not have a cellphone…it would be more difficult to tell your family about you delay as you are forbidden to use the phone at the hotel…unless you leave your credit card of course!)