Originally Posted by
Antarius
That's likely what it is, but AA can't unilaterally rebook someone out of a different country and charge a fare difference.
That's the part that I don't understand
Yeah of course not.
I suspect that, as another poster suggested, their initial flight got removed in a schedule change. They were auto-rebooked out of a "close" airport, which unfortunately makes no sense here because it's in another country with no way to get there.
They then tried to get into an alternate flight out of their original airport, but they needed 9 seats and AA was only selling 4.
At this point the guy looked at the seat map, incorrectly assumed that every empty seat corresponded to a seat for sale, and assumed that AA didn't want to put them on that flight because they wanted to sell the tickets for a lot of money. He got upset, which is understandable, but it's based on a misunderstanding.
He then tried to change to something that is outside of AA's policy for a free change after a schedule change, and so got quoted a fare difference. A supervisor agreed to waive it given the circumstances, but not cover extra hotel nights (no airline would pay for hotel nights due to a schedule change that was announced far in advance)
If this happened, then AA acted reasonably. A front line agent cannot waive a fare difference when it's required by policy, so it was escalated to a supervisor who could.
But I could be totally wrong. I only have one side of the story, from someone who is not really familiar with how all of this stuff works, and who is clearly upset.