jennstv1

Booked 2 award biz tickets for myself and spouse LAX-CLT-MBJ. I am profoundly deaf and always make sure to note this when making the reservation. I also never fly alone as not hearing boarding calls, FA's, pilot announcements, etc..makes for an anxious flight. My husband interprets all of this for me and he is generally the one that is always flying with me and our seats are always together for this reason. I always books months in advance to make sure we have seats together.

At LAX for the first leg, the incoming plane had mechanical issues. We needed to wait for another plane to be brought in which took about an hour. After we left the gate and were approaching the runway, an engine light came on in the new plane and we had to turn back. Took about an hour to fix. The GA boarded while we were waiting for repairs and told us we would be missing our connection at CLT due to the mechanical delay. She did say there were seats available in biz on the next flight from CLT to MBJ and she would re-book us on that flight. We made sure these seats were together for the reason stated above and she stated that they were. While not ideal, as we originally were getting in early in the morning at MBJ (we only had a short trip planned) and now it would be afternoon, we understood and told her to re-book. GA told us to stop at the boarding desk at CLT and get new boarding passes for the new flight.

Once we arrived at CLT, we went to the boarding desk to get our boarding passes for the new flight and were then told that we had not been re-booked on the next flight. Not only that but there were no seats available on the next flight at all. Well in the midst of all of this, we find out our original flight to MBJ had been delayed and was still sitting at the gate. We ran over and found that they had just started boarding. BUT, they tell us they had already cleared the upgrades and given our biz seats away. We didn't make a fuss, but told them to please see if they could find 2 coach seats together, as I need to have my translator sitting next to me. Of course there were not, and the only option we could get were middle seats that were separated. We decided to go with it since it didn't look like we had any other options.

I feel that due to the disability issue that maybe they should have tried to get us our seats back? These people were still boarding. Am I wrong in thinking this? One of the reasons that I am especially irritated that I have reached out via FB, Twitter, email for weeks just asking for compensation for the flight in which we were in economy and paid for biz and just a canned "we will look into this" and nothing. I was thinking of a DOT complaint but not sure if it will get me any response from AA?