Seeking your opinion on the following. On Thanksgiving morning my family and I had a flight from CLT to HNL via DFW with AA. I'm an elite member of the American Advantage club. We had 4 first class tickets, one paid for in USD, the other 3 paid for in miles at the cost of 135,000 miles per person RT. The award tickets were secured in early August. DFW to HNL is one of the newest planes in the AA fleet (amazing in so many ways especially in upper class). This aircraft/route was specifically chosen over the other less comforting routes to HNL via LAX or PHX.
On the outbound from CLT, 75 minutes prior to the 6am take-off, the flight was delayed 2 hrs to 8am since a FO called in sick. We phoned the Elite reservation desk when we learned about the flight delay knowing we would likely miss our connection to HNL in DFW. We asked to be put on a backup flight, were given a few options and chose the same flight for the next day, a like for like exchange (in case we missed our original flight in DFW). AA had no one in the CLT area "on-call" who could assist immediately upon the FO's sick call. A FO arrived from New York to help and the 6am flight took off at 7:20am instead of 8am (which would give us a chance to make the connection)...
Upon taking off at 7:20am, we realized that we were removed from the DFW to HNL flight altogether "by accident" and when we were put back onto the flight, only 1 seat was available in first class. The 3 first class tickets I had purchased with miles for my family were no longer available because 3 other passengers "upgraded" into them. Upon landing at DFW late but still with time to board the originally booked AA 123 flight to HNL, the gate agents could not assist outside of offering my family seats in economy, with no compensation offering or anything else. We chose not to board the plane and agreed to fly the next day from DFW to HNL in the seats we had originally purchased/reserved.
The questions are simple. In this technological era, how could a SNAFU like this occur? Why were we removed from our originally scheduled flight, then put back onto it but in different seats/classes? Were we supposed to be thankful for being put back on it? Why did the AA123 flight which we booked in August allow the recently upgraded passengers to keep their seats due to a computer glitch and/or human error? I asked the gate agents to ask these lucky passengers to take their economy seats back and allow my family and I to sit together as we checked-in for hours earlier - the lead gate agent advised this couldn't happen until the next morning (the day after Thanksgiving). Why is AA management comfortable with their decision to only award each member of my family a voucher of $400 after the fact? We feel that the compensation for missing our Thanksgiving plans should be greater.
On the outbound from CLT, 75 minutes prior to the 6am take-off, the flight was delayed 2 hrs to 8am since a FO called in sick. We phoned the Elite reservation desk when we learned about the flight delay knowing we would likely miss our connection to HNL in DFW. We asked to be put on a backup flight, were given a few options and chose the same flight for the next day, a like for like exchange (in case we missed our original flight in DFW). AA had no one in the CLT area "on-call" who could assist immediately upon the FO's sick call. A FO arrived from New York to help and the 6am flight took off at 7:20am instead of 8am (which would give us a chance to make the connection)...
Upon taking off at 7:20am, we realized that we were removed from the DFW to HNL flight altogether "by accident" and when we were put back onto the flight, only 1 seat was available in first class. The 3 first class tickets I had purchased with miles for my family were no longer available because 3 other passengers "upgraded" into them. Upon landing at DFW late but still with time to board the originally booked AA 123 flight to HNL, the gate agents could not assist outside of offering my family seats in economy, with no compensation offering or anything else. We chose not to board the plane and agreed to fly the next day from DFW to HNL in the seats we had originally purchased/reserved.
The questions are simple. In this technological era, how could a SNAFU like this occur? Why were we removed from our originally scheduled flight, then put back onto it but in different seats/classes? Were we supposed to be thankful for being put back on it? Why did the AA123 flight which we booked in August allow the recently upgraded passengers to keep their seats due to a computer glitch and/or human error? I asked the gate agents to ask these lucky passengers to take their economy seats back and allow my family and I to sit together as we checked-in for hours earlier - the lead gate agent advised this couldn't happen until the next morning (the day after Thanksgiving). Why is AA management comfortable with their decision to only award each member of my family a voucher of $400 after the fact? We feel that the compensation for missing our Thanksgiving plans should be greater.
Likes:
AA Platinum
