rjw242

I have never once been denied the fundamental service that I'm legally entitled to, i.e. AA getting me to my final destination per the contractual obligations of my ticket. Are you saying that this happens to you frequently?

ThreeJulietTango

^ Twitter saved me during a diversion en route to DFW that would've caused a misconnect. I was able to get my connecting flight rebooked while still in the air; if I had waited until we landed to go to the counter or call, the few seats remaining might have been gone.

^ Isn't guaranteed coach availability an EXP benefit?

There's "denied assistance" and there's an agent stating the facts that there is no availability to Chicago until the following morning. A passenger refusing to accept this doesn't mean that the agent is denying assistance.

jordyn

Only for flights at least 24 hours in the future and if you're willing to pay full coach.

rjque

No, that's "go pound sand." If they booked him on a flight the next day (first thing in the morning, and with a complimentary hotel as required by the COC), that might be a bit different. But "we might get you on a flight tomorrow on standby," which is how I read it, is not a reasonable solution.

And why discount what the GA said to the OP? A GA telling someone not to even try to get rebooked is a pretty strong message to "go pound sand."

rjque

Where do you see that the OP could have waited a day to get there? The GA seems to have said not to even try.

C17PSGR

Two things don't make sense to me. OP says he is an EXP. As an EXP, why mess with a GA? Call the EXP line. Second, there is a E175 sitting at IND that wasn't planned to be there and needs to get to ORD. It may not be until there is an adequate crew rest (although I believe IND may be an E175 crew base for Republic) but it does need to get to ORD and I'd be shocked if it the JAX passengers didn't get to Chicago on that plane. If AA had left a load of passengers from JAX sitting in IND, we would have seen something on the national news about it.

I wish we had dates and flight numbers.

rvolkcpa

It must have been this one:

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/R...500Z/KJAX/KORD

rjque

What ended up happening with the flight is less important than what the GA said to the OP. The GA said "go pound sand" so that's what the OP did. Whether that was the right decision or not is not important; the GA's message alone is a breach of the contract of carriage, which required AA to get the OP to ORD that night or put him up in a hotel room with a booking for the next available flight. And it is not at all uncommon for GAs to convey this type of "F-U" message during irrops, so there is no reason to doubt the OP's statement.

rjw242

You keep saying this, and it's patently false. Airlines in the US are under no obligation to provide hotel or meal compensation for weather delays/cancellations.

guv1976

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry: BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.1030 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/417)

See Posts 21 and 23.

If a flight is canceled (as the OP's was, after being diverted), it appears that the passenger is entitled to a refund to his original form of payment. (Post 21.)

If the passenger wants to fly with AA to the final destination and AA is unable to re-route the passenger the same day after a flight is diverted, it appears that AA is required to provide reasonable overnight accommodations at the diversion city. There does not seem to be a "weather" exception to providing overnight accommodations if a flight is canceled after being diverted. (Post 23.) I'm not sure why that is, but AA authored the contract of carriage terms, and should be bound by them.

It seems as if a passenger should not get both a refund and overnight accommodations at the diversion city, but I think that the passenger is entitled to one of them, presumably at the customer's option (depending on whether he wants to overnight and fly the next day, or prefers to make it to his destination on his own without overnighting).

Since the OP's flight was canceled after being diverted to IND, I would be surprised if the OP does not get a refund of his miles after filing a DOT complaint.

Dr. HFH

Assuming that your statement is accurate (and there apparently is some question about that; see post 54), the answer is right there; you're just ignoring it. The next available flight. Apparently, given what else was going on, the next available flight was a couple of days hence. And with a relatively short drive, I likely would have made the same choice that the OP did. I see nothing to indicate that AA was walking away other than a frazzled and hurried comment from a gate agent, which does not alter AA's obligations under DOT regulations or its own contract of carriage.


IME it is uncommon. I fly AA a lot; and nothing like this has ever happened to me. Sure, there's a range of sympathetic and empathetic employees at AA; some handle stress better than others (just like us pax). But never anything even close to this.

rjque

No, there's no question about it - see post 23. The GA breached the COC by not offering an overnight accommodation and the next available flight, and instead telling the OP to go pound sand.

Good for you for never encountering a bad GA who doesn't know the rules or doesn't care about following them. I've encountered several on AA and other airlines, as others who have posted in this thread. It's not at all uncommon to get a bad GA during irrops, especially at a small station. The fact that you have never had a bad GA doesn't mean they don't exist.

GAs make mistakes and breach the COC all the time. Most breaches don't matter much, but here when the GA said "don't even try" without offering the OP a hotel and accommodation on the next available flight, that was AA expressing its intent not to comply with the terms of the COC. There are a number of ways to deal with a breach like that, but the smartest thing to do is almost always going to be to mitigate damages by getting home as cheaply as possible and then following up with the airline. That's apparently what the OP did here.

Dr. HFH

Well, unlike you, I'm not prepared to say that you're wrong. Clearly, however, we read this differently. Given the situation, I expect that the GA didn't know when the next available flight would be. And as far as hotel accommodations, it's not clear to me that OP gave the GA a chance. GA was clearly hassled at that particular moment. Give him/her 15 minutes, however, and s/he may well have offered up a hotel room as well as the next available flight.


Of course.

rjque

"Don't bother" is a strong enough message that the GA had no intention of helping the OP. Sure, the OP could have pushed back on the GA, but it's not the OP's responsibility to try to fight a bad GA, particularly when AA had already breached the COC. The path of least resistance (and least expense) seems to have been to rent a car and get home. It's almost always a better idea to go with the easier option than to try and fight a bad GA. That easier option was likely cheaper for AA, too, since it didn't have to pay for a hotel and arrange transport the rest of the way to ORD.

jordyn

Why not? AA has this computerized reservation system that keeps track of inventory on various flights. The GA could consult this fancy system and look for the next flight with availability. That would be the next available flight, no? Or at least that's what people argue here all the time when passengers complain that they can't be accommodated quickly or in the class of service they booked, etc.

Maybe. Regardless, it seems like AA owes OP some sort of refund and the GA should probably get some more training. Or, AA would probably be out less money to pay for OP's car rental than by actually doing any of the things they were obligated to, so just paying the money seems like a reasonable business compromise in this case. Otherwise, a complaint to the DOT that AA seems uninterested in actually abiding by its CoC seems like a reasonable follow-up step.