AA Assistance Failure - Grandmother Lost in NYC

 
Old Jul 16, 2009, 12:14 am
  #1  
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AA Assistance Failure - Grandmother Lost in NYC

So last month i used miles to book an award ticket for my wife's 84 year old grandmother to visit my in-laws. MVD-BOS. She flew up and when changing planes in JFK they canceled her flight and put her on one which arrived 2 hours earlier. That wasn't such a big deal.

In both directions we asked for wheel chair assistance. Abuela can walk, but not very far, and at least in Miami, where she had to change planes, sometimes it's quite a long walk. Much longer than she can do. On the way up we got assistance and it wasn't a big deal.

On the way back, we noticed that somehow she was flying BOS-LGA JFK-EZE-MVD.... well there's no way wheel chair assistance is going to get you from one airport to another. At first they didn't want to change but we pushed and they got her on a BOS-JFK-MIA-MVD flight instead.

This is where things started to fall apart. When she arrived in JFK there were weather problems and the MIA flight was canceled. Abuela is 84 and speaks only spanish. The wheel chair assistance gave her a voucher, but didn't say what it was for, and put her on a shuttle bus. The bus drove her around new york for a couple of hours, and eventually left her as the lass passenger on the street, in the rain, at 1am, in front of a hotel.

Now we were looking at the flights, and when we saw her flight was canceled we started trying to figure out what happened. We spent 4 hours calling AA fruitlessly before eventually tracking down an agent in JFK who was helpful and figured out what hotel she was taken to.

When we called the hotel, now almost 3am, we eventually got them to put us through and talked to Grandma. This was the first time that she'd been told what was happening! She had been given food vouchers, but then taken to a hotel which didn't have a restaurant. We looked up a late night pizza place and ordered her a pizza. Needless to say grandma completely panicked that she'd be whisked away from the airport and dumped on the street in the middle of the night in the rain in front of a hotel, that we had to talk her in to trusting that she'd eventually be able to get back to the airport and on a plane.

In the morning, again, no assistance folks showed up, we had to get the front desk to write out her flight number and a request in english that she needed wheel chair assistance. They refused several times, but eventually agreed and gave her the note to show when she arrived back at JFK.

I'm perfectly fine with if we had to pay something like $50 each way for assistance. But what i'm really shocked by is that when somebody needs assistance that they not be pushed around then left hanging. It was a flight to Buenos Aires which was canceled. It would not have been hard for the assistance people to find a ready translator to explain to her at least what was going on, what the papers they were handing her were, and when here flight was.

Disappointed in AA,
r
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Old Jul 16, 2009, 12:46 am
  #2  
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It sounds like you were expectig a lot from a free wheel chair assistance request.
It's not the airline's fault an award ticket was booked with a change of airports. It is also not up to the airline to look after her. If your parent needs this kind of support, she should have a paid attendant or family member travel with her. I would have suggested someone at least meet her at the connecting point, which is exactly what we plan to do when my MIL flies through ORD, provided AA flies ORD-DME in April, as planned.

It sounds like she needed much more than a wheelchair and someone to push her. If she didn't need the wheelchair, it sounds like she still would have needed additional assistance in determining how to get from one place to another, beyond the normal needs of an airline passenger, and airlines aren't staffed for this and I would not place this blame on the airline. The airline gave her transporation, hotel, and meals for a weather problem. I doubt the shuttle bus took a passenger onboard without knowing their destination, and I really don't think it took 2 hours. In any case, the next time she travels, at least send a cell phone with her. That way, she can call you if there are issues. You can add a family member for about $10 per month. Or go somewhere and get a $15 or less pay per use phone. OH... sorry, those are US prices. Still, I think a throwaway US phone for someone visiting the US should be a good idea. In the future, hope for the best, but make plans for what to do in case of a problem. And check to make sure she isn't connecting between airports.

Last edited by mvoight; Jul 16, 2009 at 12:54 am
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Old Jul 16, 2009, 2:13 am
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+1 to mvoight's comments. Abuela is 84 years old, speaks no English, can't walk very far. You booked her to fly alone, with plane changes at both JFK and MIA, and gave her neither a cell phone nor any other way to contact you if something went awry?

AA did not let Abuela down. You did.
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Old Jul 16, 2009, 2:26 am
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Originally Posted by rabble
In the morning, again, no assistance folks showed up, we had to get the front desk to write out her flight number and a request in english that she needed wheel chair assistance. They refused several times, but eventually agreed and gave her the note to show when she arrived back at JFK.
It sounds like you're requesting the equivalent of the service AA provides for unaccompanied minors at $100 each way. You actually expect someone from AA to show up at her hotel to offer assistance? If she was an unaccompanied minor an AA employee would be with her at all times, but AA doesn't offer this service for adults.
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Old Jul 16, 2009, 2:27 am
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I agree with the people above here, cellphone anyone? Besides that, there are public phones still hanging around?

My grandmother traveled at that age too and was booked trough KLM with special assistance AND a companion to help her out (KLM employee).

Especially that your surprised about the fact that you have to write an english letter makes me laugh, your in the USA, where last time I was there, english was the official language.
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Old Jul 16, 2009, 5:09 am
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84 yo non English speaking Grandma traveling alone

internationally.. wow

what were you guys thinking? Earth to OP

you don't do that
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Old Jul 16, 2009, 6:40 am
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Originally Posted by XRottenX
I agree with the people above here, cellphone anyone?
based on personal experience with 80-year-old relatives and cellphones: unless the OP's 84-year-old grandmother is already a regular cellphone user, you'd be better off giving her a small rock to carry.
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Old Jul 16, 2009, 7:41 am
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Originally Posted by Sommerfeld
based on personal experience with 80-year-old relatives and cellphones: unless the OP's 84-year-old grandmother is already a regular cellphone user, you'd be better off giving her a small rock to carry.
+1

I sent my 80+ parents who live in another city my cell phone with a European SIM card to use on a trip last year. They did not want it, but given their age and the trip, I insisted they take it along. I have multiple family and other important numbers programmed in it. I also provided them a printed list of attractions and restaurants with phone numbers. I asked my brother who lives near them to teach them how to use it. He assured me he did.

On their first day abroad I tried calling them to the cell phone and being unsuccessful tried their hotel. The phone does not work I was told. We turned it on but nothing happened . It cant find the satellite Huh? It turns out that my brother had left them the impression that merely opening the clamshell turned it on and neglected to impress upon them the necessity of pressing down on the red button. I still chuckle at my mother's surprise when the phone lit up when she pressed the button. Once we got past that little glitch, they used it throughout the trip and it proved to be very useful.

Clearly, Abuela should not have been traveling alone and without a cell phone she could operate . This is a very frightening story and you should be grateful she came through it relatively unscathed
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Old Jul 16, 2009, 7:48 am
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Originally Posted by Sommerfeld
based on personal experience with 80-year-old relatives and cellphones: unless the OP's 84-year-old grandmother is already a regular cellphone user, you'd be better off giving her a small rock to carry.
I got a rock!! (Oh sorry, that's an inside joke on the the DL board).

84 years old....non-english speaker......can't walk....multiple plane changes..... JFK.......MIA......

What did the OP expect? Recipe for disaster. The OP is lucky nothing worse happened.
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Old Jul 16, 2009, 7:58 am
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if I were your abuela...

I would disown you as "nietos"
this is NOT the way you would treat an 84 yr. old! especially taking them through ANY connection in MIA!
let's see... 1926 (84 yrs ago), Abuela was born and for most of her adult life, she probably ferried the River Plate. If only she knew that she was going to be put thru hell in 2009... Que pena!
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Old Jul 16, 2009, 8:03 am
  #11  
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While I completely agree with all of the comments above, I will say that the AA reps she dealt with in New York could have given her some information about what was happening, at the very least. I'm quite sure that they could have located a Spanish-speaking employee at JFK with very little effort. They were not going to assist her in all of these activities, but they could have given her some idea of what they were giving her, what it was for, and what she was expected to do the following day.

Beyond that, I'll have to echo - OP, what were you thinking?

Cheers.
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Old Jul 16, 2009, 8:13 am
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Originally Posted by rabble
So last month i used miles to book an award ticket for my wife's 84 year old grandmother to visit my in-laws. MVD-BOS. She flew up and when changing planes in JFK they canceled her flight and put her on one which arrived 2 hours earlier. That wasn't such a big deal.

In both directions we asked for wheel chair assistance. Abuela can walk, but not very far, and at least in Miami, where she had to change planes, sometimes it's quite a long walk. Much longer than she can do. On the way up we got assistance and it wasn't a big deal.

On the way back, we noticed that somehow she was flying BOS-LGA JFK-EZE-MVD.... well there's no way wheel chair assistance is going to get you from one airport to another. At first they didn't want to change but we pushed and they got her on a BOS-JFK-MIA-MVD flight instead.

This is where things started to fall apart. When she arrived in JFK there were weather problems and the MIA flight was canceled. Abuela is 84 and speaks only spanish. The wheel chair assistance gave her a voucher, but didn't say what it was for, and put her on a shuttle bus. The bus drove her around new york for a couple of hours, and eventually left her as the lass passenger on the street, in the rain, at 1am, in front of a hotel.

Now we were looking at the flights, and when we saw her flight was canceled we started trying to figure out what happened. We spent 4 hours calling AA fruitlessly before eventually tracking down an agent in JFK who was helpful and figured out what hotel she was taken to.

When we called the hotel, now almost 3am, we eventually got them to put us through and talked to Grandma. This was the first time that she'd been told what was happening! She had been given food vouchers, but then taken to a hotel which didn't have a restaurant. We looked up a late night pizza place and ordered her a pizza. Needless to say grandma completely panicked that she'd be whisked away from the airport and dumped on the street in the middle of the night in the rain in front of a hotel, that we had to talk her in to trusting that she'd eventually be able to get back to the airport and on a plane.

In the morning, again, no assistance folks showed up, we had to get the front desk to write out her flight number and a request in english that she needed wheel chair assistance. They refused several times, but eventually agreed and gave her the note to show when she arrived back at JFK.

I'm perfectly fine with if we had to pay something like $50 each way for assistance. But what i'm really shocked by is that when somebody needs assistance that they not be pushed around then left hanging. It was a flight to Buenos Aires which was canceled. It would not have been hard for the assistance people to find a ready translator to explain to her at least what was going on, what the papers they were handing her were, and when here flight was.

Disappointed in AA,
r
The person that deserves all of the blame is you. There is no way you should have sent a 84 year old person in a wheel chair that cannot speak the local language through 2 connections. I feel sorry for your relative because you put her in that position. You do stupid things and bad things happen.
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Old Jul 16, 2009, 8:28 am
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Originally Posted by brp
While I completely agree with all of the comments above, I will say that the AA reps she dealt with in New York could have given her some information about what was happening, at the very least. I'm quite sure that they could have located a Spanish-speaking employee at JFK with very little effort. They were not going to assist her in all of these activities, but they could have given her some idea of what they were giving her, what it was for, and what she was expected to do the following day.

Beyond that, I'll have to echo - OP, what were you thinking?

Cheers.
Gees, blame AA? I am sure there were regular travelers confused by the cancellation. Grandma did not know what to ask for the rep to tell her anything. I am sure if you were standing there the rep would have told you very little too. It is not AA's responsibility to help each passanger understand what is happening and get a person that speaks each individual language and ENSURE everyone knows each step to take to get to their destination. My 17 year old niece figured out DFW and got from LAS to TPA with no issues. She had a mobile phone and called me along the way while at DFW. I was not expecting AA to help her more than they would me, if I was not paying for it.

OP - only one to blame is you.
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Old Jul 16, 2009, 8:34 am
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Originally Posted by tom911
It sounds like you're requesting the equivalent of the service AA provides for unaccompanied minors at $100 each way. You actually expect someone from AA to show up at her hotel to offer assistance? If she was an unaccompanied minor an AA employee would be with her at all times, but AA doesn't offer this service for adults.
AA does offer a comparable assistance for adults. Rather than being one charge for the itinerary, it is a charge for each instance of meeting the incoming flight at the connecting airport and taking the passenger to the outbound flight, staying with them until they are boarded. The passenger needing this service is preboarded. The attendant will not necessarily speak another language, though, so if Abuela wants to get something to eat it could be a problem.

AA has also been very good (IMO) with allowing a non-flying companion to accompany a passenger needing assistance to the gate at the point of origination.

I agree with those who said that it was overly optomistic of OP to book Abuela on a complex itinerary when she does not speak English. She wasn't "somehow...flying BOS-LGA JFK-EZE-MVD", somebody (Abuela or a family member) booked her on that itinerary. AA has six nonstops daily from BOS-MIA. Why book a connection? Relative takes Abuela to the gate at BOS, stays until the plane departs for MIA. In MIA, I would have paid for an attendant to meet Abuela and make sure she got on the flight to MVD, but if OP didn't want to do that, you can find someone who speaks Spanish pretty easily in MIA. Once in MVD, presumably OK with wheelchair assistance to get from the gate through immigration and customs.

Last edited by gemac; Jul 16, 2009 at 8:40 am
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Old Jul 16, 2009, 8:34 am
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Originally Posted by brp
While I completely agree with all of the comments above, I will say that the AA reps she dealt with in New York could have given her some information about what was happening, at the very least. I'm quite sure that they could have located a Spanish-speaking employee at JFK with very little effort. They were not going to assist her in all of these activities, but they could have given her some idea of what they were giving her, what it was for, and what she was expected to do the following day.

Beyond that, I'll have to echo - OP, what were you thinking?

Cheers.
I think the OP was asking for problems, sure, but thanks for the voice of reason. With all due dressing-down of the OP already done, they did get tickets that had dates and times printed on them and even in 2009 I don't think it's too much to expect that an airline might actually sell you tickets for flights and then actually fly them rather than send you to a hotel.

Yes we all know it happens, but I hope we haven't become such jaded flyers that we forget that really airlines are *supposed* to actually send you to where you're going pretty close to the dates and times they promised. Weather is weather, but even so. When things go wrong the airline should at least try to help as best they can. The old and infirm should not be banned from international travel, and I'd venture to say that on ANY flight where different languages are spoken on each end you'll have a very large number of people flying who don't speak one of those languages.

If you spend a lot of time traveling (like I expect most of us on FT do) I'm sure you'll agree that Americans in foreign countries don't have a very good track record of speaking a word of the local language, and have seen plenty of issues where an American is somewhere with a problem and can't communicate whatsoever until someone speaking English shows up. Regardless.

But you hit on the most confusing part of all. This all happened in JFK? It seems to me that it would be impossible NOT to find a spanish speaker around if you tried. It's JFK after all, a huge international airport serving dozens of locations where Spanish is predominant. Two of them being Miami and Queens, NY.

And with a flight to MIA cxl'd it's just inconceivable that there weren't a dozen, maybe 100 people also affected who speak both languages fluently.

Where I'm going with this is I wonder if grandma is the type with a little pride involved in asking for assistance. How could an older woman in a wheelchair be sitting there, with AA employees plus the other displaced pax flying to MIA, and not find a fluent Spanish speaker willing to give her a hand? It sort of boggles the mind.
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