american airlines ate my summer vacation

August 5, 2008 4:12 PM

american airlines delivered us 41 hours late to our destination. i sent an executive email carpet bomb today, but with the emergency landing in LAX today, i'm not sure anyone is going to respond to me. what else can i do? should i call? re-send the letter? how long should i wait for a response? click through for the letter...

To whom it may concern:

I am writing to express my dismay and frustration over my experience with American Airlines on my recent trip to the Virgin Islands. I am an AAdvantage member, have an AAdvantage Mastercard, and have flown American almost exclusively over the past 10 years. I have always had good experiences with American. But due to weather, personnel, and technical delays, my boyfriend and I were 41 hours late to our destination and incurred nearly $500 in additional hotel, meal, and taxi expenses.

While we cannot get the time back, we feel it is only fair to ask you to address directly the additional expense and inconvenience we incurred. I know that you are not legally or contractually obliged to compensate us for what happened, but I think our complaint is justified and hope you can do what you can to rectify our good will toward American Airlines.

Below is a detailed account of what transpired. I believe you will agree that our experience falls far short of the goals you set for customer service.

On Tuesday, July 29, my boyfriend and I had tickets to travel from Nashville, TN, to St. Thomas, USVI, via Miami. We made it to Miami with no problems, but around 4 pm on Tuesday the 29th, we learned that our 5:15 pm (AA 795) flight had been canceled due to volcanic ash from Montserrat temporarily drifting over St. Thomas.

I immediately connected with customer service and was informed that the soonest we could get to St. Thomas was via a 9:45 pm flight to JFK on Wednesday, July 30 (AA 1908), connecting to an 8 am (AA 655) flight to St. Thomas on Thursday morning. As this put us more than 36 hours behind schedule, I asked if we would be given hotel or food vouchers and was told no, because it was due to weather. I asked if we could just go back to Nashville and reschedule our trip for another time and was told no, we could go back but it would use up our ticket value and we would not be able to apply the unused portion to future travel. (We had used my AAdvantage miles for the tickets.)

So I went ahead and confirmed the MIA-JFK-STT itinerary for peace of mind, but called back frequently to try to reschedule for something more reasonable.

It was like pulling teeth to get any information about standby possibilities or connections on other airlines. At one point we had almost nailed down a route through San Juan when the customer service agent began questioning us about how we wanted to pay for the change to our ticket. By the time I was able to get her to understand we were trying to reschedule after a flight cancellation instead of making a voluntary change, those seats were gone. The agent then blamed me for not mentioning the situation sooner.

It was during this time that I learned that my American Airlines online password apparently had been reset or deleted--I never discovered what happened, only that it no longer worked.

Being unable to make better arrangements or find standby space, we took the 9:45 flight to JFK (AA 1908) on July 30th. It was delayed for 2 hours because the flight’s first officer had not arrived.

During our wait, we discovered we had been issued flight coupons for our rescheduled flights instead of boarding passes when we noticed our travel documents did not include a boarding group number. Had I not happened to ask the gate agent about it, we never would have checked in and our seats would have been given to standby passengers from an earlier canceled flight to JFK.

We arrived at JFK at 2:15 am on July 31st, approximately 4 hours before we had to return to the airport for our connecting flight. This made the hotel reservations we’d made at the JFK Best Western earlier in the day pretty worthless, but because we were not informed of the delay until after the hotel’s cancellation deadline, we could not get our money back for the hotel.

After that, our 8 am flight to St. Thomas (AA 655) was delayed for almost 90 minutes due to a technical problem connecting with the satellite system.

We incurred approximately $70 in parking fees because we had planned to meet family in St. Thomas who were returning to Nashville shortly after our arrival, and they were going to get our car out of the airport garage. Due to our excessive delays, they had left before we arrived and were unable to get the keys from us, although our trips were originally supposed to overlap by more than a day.

Finally, when I returned from St. Thomas on August 4, I was erroneously charged the $25 checked-bag fee for a box of duty-free liquor. When I mentioned this to the baggage agent, she said, “You should have said something to me before you paid. I can’t do anything about it now.”

My boyfriend was recently given a $275 travel voucher from AA for getting off an overbooked flight from Chicago to Nashville and waiting a few hours for a less crowded flight. Surely if a few hours of voluntary delay is worth $275, we deserve comparable compensation for our expenses, delays, and poor customer service.

I appreciate your patience for reading through this long and complicated story, and would be very grateful for your prompt attention to this matter.

posted by thinkingwoman to travel & transportation (22 comments total)

Looks like you were travelling with Mr Murphy.

Well-written letter, but I didn't spot anything egregious about AA's level of service or lack thereof.
posted by yort at 4:26 PM on August 5, 2008

From reading the recap from above, I wouldn't expect any compensation. The flight had to be canceled for weather issues (not an airline fault) and all other issues seem to be user error. If you had waited until the next flight to the virgin Islands from Miami, which is AA's only obligation towards you, you would've had no problems.
posted by wile e at 4:27 PM on August 5, 2008

I see you got the EECB info from Consumerist, but did you send this to them? I think it's a better venue for help than MeFi. If they post it, it will get attention.
posted by anthropoid at 4:27 PM on August 5, 2008

Variations of this happen all the time on flights to the Caribbean and to other vacation destinations. For a lot of trips, a delay of a day is just inconvenient and unpleasant. But for tropical vacations, people have often pre-paid for very expensive and non-refundable resorts (hundreds or even thousands of dollars per night), and are on very tight schedules. There is no way that the airlines can possibly recompense people for the costs of arriving late to their vacation — I very much doubt you will get any sort of cash payment.

Now, all that said, I think your chances of getting a ticket voucher are pretty good, because those are really cheap for the airline to hand out. I've always just sent a regular letter to the customer service department; I've never tried the mass-email approach and don't know which is better.

Either way, though, you need to give them time to respond before you look for ways to escalate. I'm not sure about email; with a regular letter I wouldn't try again for at least a couple of weeks. Three or four days would be a reasonable minimum of time to give them before you decide that you were completely ignored, I think.
posted by Forktine at 4:37 PM on August 5, 2008

wile e: the next available flight with seats on it was that friday.
posted by thinkingwoman at 4:40 PM on August 5, 2008

Did you have travel insurance for the trip? Claim on that, and if you didn't have it, you should get it next time you travel. It sounds as though the airline did what they could in the circumstances. Nobody can help the weather, but your password and such are totally separate issues (why didn't you ask why you were being charged for the duty free bbefore paying?).

Travelling is meant to result in learning, otherwise you're doing it wrong.
posted by goo at 4:52 PM on August 5, 2008 [1 favorite]

I'd also note that the Consumerist link emphasizes the importance of first trying the regular channels of communication, and using the executive emails when the regular channels fail. There are (low-level) people who are paid to deal with run of the mill complaints like yours; an executive needs to be involved when those low-level people blow it and do their best to provide you with supremely crappy service.

For that to happen, you have to first give them a chance to do so — you may have done so, but it isn't clear from your email.
posted by Forktine at 4:59 PM on August 5, 2008

You didn't write to Customer Relations first? If you don't get a response in two weeks, I'd de-escalate by going through the normal channels, who will be able to deal with this efficiently. Hopefully someone else will forward your complaint to them first.
posted by grouse at 5:12 PM on August 5, 2008

american airlines delivered us 41 hours late to our destination.

The vast majority of which was because of a volcano? Which, before any other delay or other problem occurred, immediately made you think "I should be compensated"?

what else can i do?

You can be reasonable.
posted by Flunkie at 5:26 PM on August 5, 2008

The no hotel and food vouchers decision was correct - weather delays are not the airline's responsibility. The $25 should be refunded since it is an error. I'm not sure about the parking fees.

Generally, in this situation what you can get is a pass to the AAdmirals Club. It's not a fantastic option, but it's definitely better than rambling through the airport for hours schlepping your bags. Also, the desk staff in the AAdmirals Club usually can do a better job of rebooking. They are sitting there with you and have time to find other options. I know that's no help to you today, but it may be useful in the future.

Any costs you incurred for technical delays should be reimbursed, but mostly it seems you lost time. AA also didn't deliver good customer service, but there's not really compensation for that either.

You'll probably get a voucher for goodwill and an apology.

I'm sorry your vacation turned into such a hassle. Hopefully, the two of you enjoyed the few days you had in the tropics.
posted by 26.2 at 5:42 PM on August 5, 2008

to clarify: the volcanic ash problem was from another island. ash blew over the airspace and cleared when the wind changed. only that flight was affected.

it just all seemed unreasonable that flying out of a major hub, the airline was unable to cope more promptly with a single flight cancellation.
posted by thinkingwoman at 5:49 PM on August 5, 2008

It really depends on how many flights they have going to that spot. Also, since you were on a frequent flyer ticket you were at the back of the line for rebooking.

I'm sorry, I know it wasn't a fun experience.
posted by 26.2 at 6:00 PM on August 5, 2008

I can't help you get compensation, but I think you have every right to be pissed. I don't pretend to know the flight schedules, but I have to think they could have booked you on another airline via Ft. Lauderdale/Orlando/Atlanta. Maybe the rules say you're entitled to nothing for being delayed almost two full days. If so, the rules are wrong.
posted by cnc at 6:02 PM on August 5, 2008

yes, i think they should have at least let us go back home and credited us for the unused leg of our trip. that would have cost them nothing at all.

i do know that there were at least four flights that would have gotten us there the next day just from personal experience...they were all overbooked by 10-15 people already, which seems like bad logistics to me in a region known for weather problems (i fly to the caribbean often because i have family there). then there were some i learned about later, going via atlanta, other islands, etc.

anyway, the point, although i appreciate everyone's sympathy (and could do without the judgment about the validity of my expectations), is to find out how else i can make sure my complaint gets action.

and by the way, i know there's no chance in hell they will write me a check. 'tis the nature of bargaining: open by asking twice as much as you expect to receive. ;)
posted by thinkingwoman at 6:20 PM on August 5, 2008

'tis the nature of bargaining: open by asking twice as much as you expect to receive.

Actually, no.

Essentially, you paid nothing for the ticket except miles. The airline legitimately owes you $25 dollars for their error. You're asking for $550 in travel vouchers. Your opening position is a bad faith bargaining posture. Perhaps that's the source of some of the negative feedback you're getting here.

Your question is what can you do to get more traction? Not too much since you've already contacted everyone at American. You've eliminated the escalation path which you could have used if their first offer isn't acceptable to you. External organizations such as the Consumerist might be your best option; however, they may suggest you give American time to respond.
posted by 26.2 at 6:59 PM on August 5, 2008

yes, i think they should have at least let us go back home and credited us for the unused leg of our trip. that would have cost them nothing at all.

Er, wrong. For two reasons:

1) Weather problems are explicitly not their fault or responsibility.

2) Giving you a free flight back home costs them the revenue of those seats.

I'm sorry... I am as much a hater of airline indifference as anyone here, but I really am failing to see why they would owe you anything.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 7:14 PM on August 5, 2008

send it snail mail, too
posted by pinto at 8:05 PM on August 5, 2008

you'll get a better idea of what to expect by posting this question on FT's AA board...
posted by dawdle at 8:30 PM on August 5, 2008

Well-written letter, but I didn't spot anything egregious about AA's level of service or lack thereof.

Have to agree. I'm really sorry you had such a sucky experience (and it really sounds like it sucked all the way around) but I very much doubt that you'll receive any sort of compensation from AA. Personally, Mr. Arnicae and I are pooling our miles for one last flight with AA (we are currently several pegs up the frequent flier chain) and then switching our business, as much as is possible, to other carriers.

Maybe this might be time for you to do the same. . .
posted by arnicae at 9:51 PM on August 5, 2008

Volcanos erupt when they want to, and although it impacted your travel plans, AA has no control over when and how they erupt.

That's an excellent letter though, and best of luck, but I don't see how AA owes you any compensation at all.
posted by bshort at 5:40 AM on August 6, 2008

I'm not sure if anything can be done about it after the fact, but I think the email "carpet bomb" may be counterproductive.

In my experience, if you send a complaint to one person, that person feels an obligation to do something about it, even if it's just to forward it to the correct person. If you send a complaint to several people, they'll each delay responding (or likely not respond at all), hoping that someone else on the recipient list will take care of it.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 9:29 AM on August 6, 2008

You could file a better business bureau complaint.

I've gotten miles from AA by going to BBB, after making my attempts through AA's customer relations staff first. I did have a litany of AA-errors to include in my complaint and the financial losses to ask them to reimburse (not-weather-related). And I got much less than I thought was fair (something like 7,000 miles). But it was better than nothing, and kept me using AA for the past year.
posted by Amizu at 1:41 PM on August 6, 2008