thanks for the suggestion. Seems a darn expensive risk to take and ultimately, they are unlikely to let me access the call record and if Cape Town say it does not support my case, there would be no way of rebutting that. As of now I can buy an AA Tkt on AY paper for £520 to MSP via ORD which is actually a far better routing than LHR-JFK//LGA-MSP so it doesn't seem to make much sense to me to speculate £1,400 which I doubt I would ever see again. Just blooming frustrating that they recognise they may be in error but will not take steps to resolve the issue one way or the other before the day in question.