Originally Posted by
Often1
AA most certainly knows that your card was declined and that you have not yet paid for the purchases. In due course, you will likely hear from AA, perhaps if you try to use the same card for any other AA purchase, including a ticket. You can call Customer Service to settle up if you want to avoid the bother.
Does AA really try and settle up with the consumer? I highly, highly doubt that (though I don't know). They'd go after the credit card company, not the consumer, I assume. In fact, how would they even know who to go after? They'd have to get your name from the credit card transaction record and match it to the passenger manifest, then pull your contact information from the record. This would only work if the name on the card matches the name on the manifest, which is probable but not certain. That's certainly not difficult, but it does require some human effort, almost certainly more than $8 worth of labor. And I don't know the legalities of credit card merchant agreements, but I would have some privacy issues with them matching on board purchases from a credit card to passenger manifests to get your information.
Sorting out payment issues like this is one of the ways credit card companies justify their existence and their processing fees.