jimmyw9

Firstly I do not travel domestically with AA very often and so I am not very familiar with their procedures. Therefore the result I received could have been the fault of my own non action at ORD. My normal route is LHR-LAX non stop. However, I was taking a quick trip over to show my mother my new house. I chose to fly LHR-ORD-SNA this time as my mother likes to break the journey and also by taking the first flight out of LHR to ORD means you arrive in SNA around 2.00pm. We had a “B” class fare that I had upgraded using my miles.

We checked in at LHR and received our boarding passes for both legs. LHR-ORD in J and ORD-SNA in F. Had a pleasant flight to ORD, arrived early. We decided not to visit the AC and proceeded straight to the gate. We were at the gate about and hour before departure. The flight looked really busy and it was not too long before they were asking for volunteers. Boarding was delayed slightly. When F was called to board my mother and I went forward to board, gave our boarding cards and these were rejected in the scanner. The agent said that we needed to go to the desk. When we got there, we were told that we had been taken off of this flight, because we had not arrived at the gate 30 mins before departure. Is this correct? When we checked in at LHR we were not told that we had to present ourselves at the gate. I figured that since I had the boarding pass I did not need to do anything more. Also if people had to be bumped off the flight, surely there were people with a lower class of ticket than us?(Originally we had "B" Fares) Or by upgrading did I make us venerable in times of operational nightmares? Or did everybody else on the flight have "B" class fares and above (Unlikely!!) I am Platinum and my mother has no status with AA if that makes a difference.

To start off with we were not offered any compensation, when I asked the agent she said that we did not qualify as we did not volunteer. After an exchange of a few words, I was not unpleasant and I did not raise my voice, she conceded, wow $300! However, she could only give us standby for the next flight which was at 5.05pm, I said that I did not care about traveling in F, she said that we would be lucky, so I guess we were standby for Y. We did not get on that flight and ended up on the 7.08pm flight.

Do I have a case for complaint?

I am fairly new to this site and often read threads of peoples woes of bad treatment by AA. I did not think I would be one of their casualties.