Originally Posted by ngls

Hi all,

I was flying on AA759 on July 16 which arrived in PHL at 17:21 instead of 15:55. I miraculously made it for my AA 490 which was also delayed and arrived at 21:03 in ORD causing me to miss my last leg to SMF. AA was pretty good in rebooking me for the next morning and getting me a hotel. When I e-mailed them for the EC 261/2004 compensation that I assumed I was owed, I got the following reply:

"Our records show flight AA490 departing Philadelphia was delayed due to an Air Traffic Control hold in Chicago. This can be caused by weather, ramp closures, etc. I am very sorry the reason for this interruption was not given to you during the delay.

As you have correctly identified, European Union Regulation (EC) No. 261/2004 of the European Parliament and Council has established common rules on compensation and assistance to passengers in the event of cancellations or long delays of flights. Under this regulation, in the event of a flight cancellation or delay, passengers are entitled to established levels of compensation. However, this regulation does not apply when a flight is cancelled or delayed for less than 3-hours, flight is departing from the United States or a flight is cancelled or delayed due to weather or Air Traffic Control issues. Since flight AA759 was delayed due to an inbound medical diversion, American Airlines is not required to provide the compensation you have referred to."

I think that this is wrong since there was a crew availability issue at PHL but I don't have any way of verifying this. Also, the medical diversion story doesn't make sense because this happened to the flight of the day before which was cancelled (they had a very early replacement flight on the 16th for all those passengers. In the end of the e-mail they threw at me 10k miles for the inconvenience. Do you guys think I should push back or just take it and move on?