MSPeconomist

Was the compensation calculated on the basis of two or three IDBs?

travelgeek1197

Totally off-topic, but shocked by this. Good for you.....my assumption is your knowledge of AA has something to do with your means of income generation or some familia relationship----so to not support AA is probably a bit stickier than for most.

~TG

JonNYC

Full disclosure as some know this some don't, but, in reality I haven't been a good customer for AA for several years. I don't chase status and I redeem a lot. Flights I pay for are always premium cabin, rarely great deals (as in I just buy what I want, when I want) and almost never on AA.
Domestically, for paid flights, my family and I fly DL much more than AA and are very happy with them. So, in reality, not a recent development in any way. Just to give that perspective.

And, no, thank god, none of my income nor any family members' comes from employment at AA-- I'm successful . And, I can't think of a reason in the world that AA -deserves- my business or knee-jerk support, etc.

DenverBrian

Interesting how you take my comments and instantly swing as far to the other side of the pendulum as is humanly possible to answer. Hyperbole much?

DenverBrian

But which could be modeled and emulated for US carriers in the US. @:-)

nrr

To keep DOTs database of AAs mistreatment of pax updated.
If no one complains the assumption is that everything is OK.

cb1111

It wa calculated on the two IDB's, which was my point all along. AA didn't give me anything that they weren't required to do by law. While the $1670 sounds like a lot, it is calculated from the two IDB's.

As far as some of the other points raised by posters - I'd have happily pushed my mom around in a wheelchair, but you can't do that at airports.

ABQ would have been (and was) fine, but not at 2AM. Ever tried to get transportation to SAF at ABQ at 2AM?

I'm a bit surprised that some posters here think I should be happy that AA did what they were required to do by law and that I should jut forget about the third IDB and the other issues caused by AA's incompetence just because the compensation is a fair chunk of money.

One of the flight options that I was apparently offered (but didn't know about at the time) was a flight to Roswell - about 200 miles from my destination - I guess some posters here think that would have been OK too.

While compensation is important, it is equally important for AA to be held accountable for their actions - that employees are retrained and steps taken to preclude these problems in the future.

FWIW, neither DFW nor ABQ were particularly crowded the day of travel.

hotturnip

We're happy that AA did what they were required to by law because normally you have to fight a LOT more to get them to concede that they DID break the law. There's a case in the UA forum of an attorney who had to take them to small claims court in Memphis. It took over a year.

Your best alternative is only to call or write customer service, and, while acknowledging that they had compensated you correctly for the IDBs, there were other service lapses outside of that that you really want to make them aware of. Be nice, not entitled. You might get some miles, you might not. Think of it as just venting.

You're very lucky to have gotten an immediate offer of cash.

cb1111

That makes quite a bit of sense and exactly what I did - accept the compensation and work the ret up the chain.

Cheers

abeyro

Most of us seem to be flabbergasted to death by the sum which appeared at the end of the OP's odyssey.
But... the sum of $875 just arose from multipling "the remaining flight coupons value" by EIGHT (2 IDB, each 400%).
Meaning: the coupons were merely ~$100

Would you believe your eyes and survive consecutive astonishment if AA HAD to multiply, say, $ 500?

bobert24

I think this is pretty dead-on. Honestly, I really want to know how you contacted AA that they admitted to this. Call? Email? Write? What group/contact number/whatever? Most airlines just completely blow you off when you contact them, so I want to know what method you used to actually get a real response.

Please let us know how this goes. Others may have different experiences, but I'm afraid that by accepting the compensation, you may have cut yourself off from any other action by AA. They'll see the compensation as accepted, and call it case closed.

Now if you mean you're working up the DOT chain, you may not have shot yourself in the foot very much.

Either way, I think your taking the money was a good call.

TiberiusOnTime

The same way you would have gotten there at 7am in the morning, by Taxi.

JonNYC

OP states:
Which I tend to -assume- actually is AA Customer Relations (and therefore email.) And I certainly agree that there's no further compensation likely forthcoming from them, if that's what's meant by "working the rest up the chain" etc.

cb1111

Right. My first response was "wow, that's pretty decent compensation" until I did the math on the mandatory compensation. While the value of the "remaining segments" can't be calculated by us mere mortals because we don't have their magic calculator, we can come close by getting a rough value per mile from the cost of the entire ticket. That puts it in the $200 range, so multiplied by 4 gives you the $835 that AA calculated. Multiplied by two gives you the $1670.

If the problem were a "normal" IDB (normally caused by overselling a flight) then this compensation would be correct. In this case, the IDB resulted from obvious incompetence on the part of AA which, in my opinion, combined with the third IDB, should clearly require more compensation.

I too, initially was blinded by the $ amount until I realized that it was merely what the law required them to pay.

cb1111

At 3PM, we had three taxis that refused a trip to Santa Fe, so I'm not sure that we'd have found one at 2AM