I flew last night on AA904 from GIG-MIA. This is the earlier of the two scheduled GIG flights, this one operated by a 772.

Arrived at airport and all seemed in order. Standard boarding call was made in the shabby GIG lounge and we went to the gate to learn that the aircraft had an aircon problem and boarding would be delayed. We boarded about 30 minutes late and everyone quickly settled in to their seat.

Captain came on with the standard welcome then gave us the news: the air con problem was more complex than he originally thought. Said he'd update in 20-30 minute increments. That went on for a couple of hours, with regular updates, until the mechanics determined they needed to power down the aircraft completely which required passengers to deplane. At this point it was almost 1AM and the GIG airport was starting to wind down, but we were let back into the terminal and lounge. We got an update shortly after that the flight had been rescheduled to 2PM on 02Jan, then revised backwards when they were able to locate and secure the proper fix. We were instructed to head back to the gate about 2:30AM, but were warned ominously that there were would be no dinner service due to concerns about food spoilage.

Food options in GIG, if you haven't been, consist primarily of the duty free store, a coffee stand and a souvenir shop with candy. Not exactly dinner provisions. We reboarded and departed about 3AM.

There were so many failures with this flight it's not even funny. My seat (in business) was only semi-functional. The flight map and much of the AVOD in my seat was not working. I never saw Bose headsets distributed (might have been asleep). They never even attempted to serve anything at all after takeoff, like granola bars from the tarmac delay kits. Nothing. It was if they used the excuse of no meals to provide exactly no service.

I slept most of the journey and woke for breakfast which they did fully complete. No hot towels or beverage runs were ever attempted from my vantage point. They sort of snuck in the major news that there would not be meals available after the door had already closed, at which point there wasn't much in the way of options.

I always travel with some small snacks (I prefer Kind bars, good nut-based treat), so I at least had a small snack for myself.

I have to hand it to the captain - I really did feel he was doing his very best to get the flight out and into Miami, and he was thorough with his updates. The cabin crew were completely absent which was absurd.

All in all, the captain summarized it best: a complete debacle. This is 2 of 2 777-200 flights I had with AA over the holidays that were delayed for MX. Cannot say if that's a trend, but it's concerning, especially when they handle it the way they did in GIG.