sorry if i posted this in the wrong place-----

So a week ago I posted in the AA forum a story of my girlfriends travels to the us from ZRH. She was to depart on AA on April 6 flying to SFO. The flight was cxld due to mechanical problems and AA only has 2 flights to the US per day. AA told her all the other flights on every airline in the world were booked. They re booked her to fly the next day screwing up our plans of course. She finally made it and was set to go back this weekend on April 14 Sat.

This time she had to go through JFK which as most of you know was not an option this weekend so after 1.5hrs on the phone a a totally disorganized AA desk i got her re booked. now as we look here my complaint is not about the re booking because I can understand weather but its is the lack of service in getting a re booking and the lack of empathy at the airport. I had to speak to an AA res superv. because the agents were all incompetent (which has always been my experience) and she was finding nothing. now she told me if there is a seat they will protect it on any airline so I called AMEX to book a ticket and they found me one leaving that day SFO-ORD-ZRH on UA and SWISS so I asked the supervisor what the deal was and she told me she could not find it. I decided to stroll down to the UA tix counter and ask them. they found the same flight for 450 all in one way and again i asked what the hell. In the end I could not get the tix because swiss would not give up the seat so I had to settle for a delta flight leaving Sunday. Now, the point I am getting to, is the fact that I am finding seats when I feel it is their job.

We arrive at SFO on Sun and 430 am for a 615am dept and everything goes smoothly. I leave the airport at about 6 assuming everything is fine. I get home and my gf send me a text that they are still there and this is about 645. So I think ok its only 30 min no big deal it eventually got worse and at 945 I was back in the airport with my gf looking for another flight as this one also was canceled for mechanical issues(oil leak) so now AA has cxld and delta has cxld. Delta was much less accommodating and in fact they were totally worthless. they told me if i found a flight they would reissue a ticket. I had looked before I came on kayak.com and found many flights. So immediately i called Air France they had a seat but would not book it for me unless delta called them and delta would not call them unless they booked it. So here we are with a seat in the air and two airlines acting like children. at this point i am dealing with a delta supervisor since the agent was rude and yelling at me but it wasn't much of an improvement. after some firm arguing I got what i want and she took of that day on Air France without a problem. I want her to be compensated for all the trouble especially the international phone calls she had to make since she is from CH. if the airlines would do a more thorough job in re booking she wouldn't have had to be on the phone so long. What kind of compensation can she get? Would AA and Delta both be responsible since AA re booked her on delta or is it all AA. I appreciate all of your time.

Sorry to hear of your troubles. Cases like this make you wishing you had used a competent travel agent who could do the legwork for you. I know agents often charge service fees but for international flights many airlines still pay commissions so the service fees are minimal or non-existent. I know most people on this board prefer to book directly though there still often a value in using travel agents.

Honestly not trying to be snarky, but you will get more responses if you add some paragraphs marks to that post. I tried but I just can't read it.

Due to the fact this covers a multitude of carriers, and is not truly mileage related, I'll move it to TravelBuzz.

hopefully this will be easier to read.. any advice on how to word my complaint would be appreciated

Well, at least they admitted it was a mechanical. I've found that a lot of airlines these days avoid telling you anything about delays and cancellations so that they can avoid actually lying about it when it's a mechanical to keep from giving you a hotel voucher.

Did you get the names of the people you spoke with? That's always the best when writing a complaint letter, because that's what you'll have to do. You might get a travel voucher out of it. I doubt Delta will give anything, however.

TAs are often useless in situations like this. They are on the other side of the world, and if you need them it's most likely outside normal business hours for them so you have to wait for them to open the next morning or after the weekend...

HTB.