Originally Posted by
sbedelman
They can say that but its not true. Airlines have an obligation, spelled out in their COC and by contract law to perform according to their agreement with you within reason. Generally this means putting you on another carrier, in the same class of service with a schedule/routing/time of travel as close to what you had as possible. Possible means there are revenue seats available.
If they tell you that they have no obligation to book you on a given carrier and only offer an inferior routing/schedule/time of travel you can insist to the contrary. If they refuse you have a number of options, one of which would be to refuse what is offered, purchase a ticket on the routing you know to be comparable and sue in small claims court for the cost of your new ticket.
In my case, MX actually has the best routing - a non-stop from LAX to CUN, so I would not call it inferior. Of course it may not work as well for people in SEA or other places but I had no issues. And I actually really like MX - their ground service is a bit lacking but their in-flight product relative to AA/DL is excellent. I would have picked MX anyway had I been given a choice over AA/DL. If I were in coach, I may have picked AA since that would give me free upgrades as EXP.
Anyway I am happy. Rather than complaining about seats running out over Christmas, why don't you call AS? I did and it took about 10 mins to get everything sorted out.