Minos

You guys are totally cracking me up.

From what I read, the group had paid reservations. From there on, everything, 100% of it is AA's fault. It is not a question of buts or ifs. AA decided to overbook the flight to earn some extra questionable and gambling profits and screwed up big time.

Now, you are siding with AA because you are airlines nuts/lovers/whores. If AA had screwed up with your own upgrade, you would not take it like that I suppose. Just look at all the whining post on FT starting "got denied upgrade and suspect GA inappropriately gave it to someone not worth my salt"

As a principal, these people are not supposed to know the ins and out of airlines operations. Several years ago, you could not check-in at T-24 because there was no online check-ins. Some airlines do not let you reserve seats in advance (is it Korean Air that limits this at 30 days prior?). And blah blah bah. This is not Ryanair we are speaking about. AA still lets you check-in at the airport at a kiosk and you are supposed to be able to do it. Plus it may very well be that there were not 26 seats available in the free seat-assignment zone to do it online.

End result is, I am siding with the principal. I do not think other must be asked to IDB but special circumstances require special means. A sweet enough offer would have found some VDB. They just did not sweeten the deal enough. Again, they were cheap.

Besides all the logistics mentioned earlier, how would you choose which kids would stay and which ones would not. How to deal with parents questioning why his child was sent home for a day when his neighbor was not and was enjoying the previously paid visits to DC? How to compensate kids that got a shorter stay in DC although they paid? After all many of you must be asking for some compensations whenever AA is late so why would the parents not do the same?

Finally, many speak about the protocol at AA and other passengers doing their due diligence. This is BS. First, it would have to be in the CoC. Plus I have seen people being offloaded despite having a seat assignment and a boarding pass because of weight issues at short and/or hot-high runways. (pax/bags that were individually weighted were heavier than usual I guess) .

AA is wrong.



Anyone putting the blame on the Principal needs a reality check. As someone said earlier, 6 people would have been offloaded regardless. Even if you check-in at T-23.59.59, there is a remote possibility that the 120 or so other passengers might have checked themselves at T-23.59.599 anyway. With guys like some of you, you would still claim the group was irresponsible because they did not use a code/software to automatically checked themselves in at T-23.59.5999999999. As if chaperons had no other things to do at T-24...