nrr

Several years ago my (red-eye) sfo-jfk was delayed 2 hours due to late arrival of jfk-sfo. Ultimately my flt was cancelled due to mechanical issues. AA paid for a mediocre motel; I checked in at 2:30 am, but had to depart at 5:00 am to catch my new flt at 7:00 am The food voucher could only be used to get snacks from the hotel's canteen, since their service restaurant was not yet open. I probably should have stayed at the airport.

GUWonder

Within the past 24 months, I was flying AA from Europe via PHL to another US destination. The AA flight left from Europe late, so late that I and others missed our connections out of PHL. AA was refusing to put up passengers in hotels and claimed there were no grounds to get a hotel at AA expense at PHL because the cause of the delay included ATC/weather on arrival. I informed the flight rebooking staff that the delay out of Europe was substantially what it was because of AA crew members getting late to the gate for the AA flight to PHL.

I did manage to get AA to put up for a hotel for me and those passengers who were near me at the time. But other passengers before and after me at PHL got stuck at PHL overnight with no assistance from AA other than the flight re-booking for the next day.

DL is so much better than AA is in this regard. Even as a DL 25k-50k flyer, DL is better in such situations than AA.

wetrat0

Agreed. Unless you have bad credit you should have a card like the Chase Sapphire Reserve. They will cover up to $500 per ticket, once per trip, for any delay of 6 hours or more. That should be enough to stay in a nice hotel and get a nice meal. And this is in addition to the coverage for any pre-paid things you missed.

flyerCO

Since the flight was ex-EU, EU261 requires they pay for hotels/meal/ground transportation. This is regardless of the reason. It's called "duty of care" and applies regardless the reason for delay. Compensation is only due though if it's within the airlines control. However that is separate from duty of care.

nrr

The need for the hotel room occurred outside EU (=in US).
(1)Does EU261 apply?
(2)If it does and AA doesn't agree, what could one do?

fotographer

Never had AA cover a hotel, even when the flight ORD to LHR several years ago, went delayed, delayed and then cancelled, just got a hotel myself, bettering then spending all night in ORD, and since I missed my connecting flight to BOM, they told me that they would provide a hotel at LHR for the day (sure....) never happened.

JDiver

The best place to check is http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...er-thread.html.

flyerCO

Where the need is occurs doesn't matter. What matters is that the need arises because of a covered flight. Thus since the flight to PHL was late and caused the misconnect AA is on the hook for hotels. OTOH if the PHL flight was on time but the connecting flight was cancelled due to weather no hotel would be due.

plon

Every time I've had an AA flight go MX, I have gotten on the phone and been rebooked by the Plat desk, and went straight to the ticket desk upon deplaning where they gave me a hotel voucher. The same happened with US previously.

I've always found them to be proactive about it when it's their fault, when its WX, nada, that's when you use your CC's insurance.

The smallest state

ABSOLUTELY. When events happen the hotels fill up quick and then only the Microtel or Super 8's are left. I'll stick to the Marriott/SPG/Hyatt level and eat the cost.

oysterhead43

Twice I've had AA reimburse my hotel when a flight was cancelled.

I simply submitted the receipt afterwards along with taxi expense. On the first one, I made the mistake of booking hotel with hotel points. That made the reimbursement more challenging - won't do that again.

SkyTeam777

Ugh, I can't get anyone to even look at my reservation to see why it was delayed. Expert Flyer is showing "operational reasons" versus "weather cancelation" so am curious as to what happened.