I understand that AA has no direct responsibility with a future itinerary but I am very surprised that you all think AA is not at fault or has no responsibility to provide some form of compensation. I can quote many instances where they have provided me compensation for their screw up. e.g. I was supposed to take a DFW-LAX flight but that flight got cancelled at the last minute so we landed up taking a DFW-AUS-LAX flight but in the process our bags got messed up and we had a cruise to catch from LA. Hence in the process our bags never made it on the cruise. I wrote to them after the trip was over and they gave each one of us 15K miles and also reimbursed approx. $300 worth of purchase receipts due to non-delivery of bag. 2 years ago my wife was flying back home from New Orleans and her flight got canceled and the earliest she could fly back was 48 hours later due to all other flights being sold out or canceled in between. Then also they gave a $300 voucher for the inconvenience. I have also received 15K miles compensation atleast 3 other times in last 4 years for smaller issues such as flight getting diverted or delayed by 4-6 hours.
This incident was much more egregious than any of the other incidents I have quoted above. It involved 2 flight cancellations, sitting on the tarmac for 2.5 hours, delaying flight 15 mins at a time for another 4 hours and giving false hope of finding a crew. On top of all that once a flight is cancelled at origin itself it is their responsibility to deliver the baggage back to the customer at point of origin which they failed to do so. Finally they failed to deliver the bag to my final destination and continuously giving false hope that it will be sent to my hotel in Cape Town.even though a world tracer was properly created with all the details.
The airline is in the business of getting you from point A to point B in a reliable and timely manner.and if they fail to deliver on that promise they clearly owe the customer some compensation.
I was just looking for ideas on how to make my pitch sound more convincing but i am definitely going to fight this out with AA customer relations.