atlandy

My mom has been saving miles for over 20 years to take my family on a vacation to Europe in First Class. We redeemed a total of 500,000 AAdvantage miles for four First Class tickets from Atlanta to London Heathrow. Our routing including a connection in Chicago (O'Hare). On the morning of our departure we received a phone call informing us that our flight from Atlanta to Chicago had been canceled as the crew that was to fly the plane from Chicago to Atlanta had timed out. We were rebooked on a flight that departed two hours after our original flight and we would still have more than enough time to connect in Chicago and were given a single $48 meal voucher that had to be used at one time. Unfortunately there was only one First Class seat available on the new flight and three of the passengers ended up sitting in the last three rows of a CRJ-700 (Very Loud). When we arrived in Chicago I was advised by the Agent in the Flagship Lounge to contact Customer Relations. Upon our return to Atlanta I contacted Customer Relations and waited on hold for over 30 minutes. I was eventually transferred to the Customer Relations Manager who upon looking in to what had happened offered us a total of 16,000 AAdvantage miles for the flight cancellation and resulting two hour delay in Atlanta. When I explained that I did not feel that this was adequate compensation for the downgrade the agent told me that since we were in First Class for at least one of our two outbound segments we would not receive any compensation for the downgrade on the other segment. I pressed further for additional compensation and was told that the Compensation Guidelines only called for 8,000 AAdvantage miles but that she was willing to double the miles considering the circumstances. When I inquired as to what the compensation would have been had we been flying on a paid ticket I was told that it would have been the same either way. I was then told that most people would consider the 16,000 miles to be adequate compensation. Do you feel that the compensation that we were offered was adequate and if not what would you consider to be adequate compensation?