First, I've flown nearly 5 million real miles during over 45 years of business travel, most domestic and on U.S. airlines although some on foreign. I've had hundreds of delays for weather and equipment, and a fair percent of those were for six hours or more. That's not my beef. It's how American was handling it all, even when given a lot of benefit of the doubt. Many other longtime and high status passengers were seeing the same thing and were discussing it, and many of them were much better than I was in tracking tail numbers and talking with specialized call centers.

Wrap up: We departed 13 hours late, and after our equipment twice was in place but suddenly taken for other flights instead. OK, we understand that, too. But not once did a single person at American say something as simple as: "We know you've all had a long day and we appreciate your patience." Not once. Not at the gates (we were at many gates). Not when finally boarded. Not en route. And not after we landed. Rather: "Thanks for flying American. We hope to see you again soon."

A final note. Once our now third substitute equipment was at the gate, they decided a seat needed to be replaced. You'd think that would have been called in ahead of time, but apparently not. So even though we were to board "in 20 minutes," that didn't happen either. It took several other customers to periodically ask the gate attendants, what's happening and could they please announce it? Only to be greeted with, we already told you, we're replacing a seat. They finally realized telling the crowd, all now standing at this gate for 70 minutes-plus, that while they finally had installed the new seat with seat belts, etc., they still needed to find cushions.

So our 10 a.m. departure was at 11:05 p.m. Are we all glad we all finally got home or to our conferences? Of course. Did we all appreciate that the flight wasn't cancelled? Of course. It's just that no one seemed to care about customer relations. Ironically, when I called Delta at 3 a.m. to cancel the backup reservation I had made 12 hours earlier, they apologized for my delays on American and said they hoped to see me on a future Delta flight. Now that's good customer relations, and it starts at the top and it means building a culture company-wide that knows, our business is to serve our customers.