Questions and Answers

Hi all,

This is probably a little complex, but I’d like everyone’a opinion about what I should do:

In August, my wife and I bought round trip business class seats that cost a few thousand dollars each on American Airlines to go China to visit her family (note: we both have gold elite status). We were scheduled to leave on December 23rd and return on January 6th.

Back in October, I received an email from AA that said that there was a rescheduling of my flights. This happens to me often on AA (moving it 10 minutes forward or backwards, stuff like that), so I didn’t think much about it. I looked at the schedule and saw I had my flight to Dallas, from China to Dallas, and Dallas to my home base. I realized that there was no longer my flight to China! They didn’t even reschedule us on a different flight!

I called the Gold desk and asked about it. They explained that the original DFW to China flight was cancelled and asked what they wanted me to do. It took about 20 minutes to find a flight, but basically, we’re having to leave on the 22nd.

I left it at that because I was so frazzled about my flight to China being cancelled (and all of my other plans, since we’re actually meeting them in Thailand). However, after thinking about it, I’m upset that they moved my flight and didn’t even offer any kind of compensation. It’s not like they moved us to a different flight in the day; rather, I had to move my schedule around by a whole day, meaning new lodging, more money (we’re spending an extra day in Asia), and more time off from work.

If I was just your average person in economy, I’m not sure if I should request any kind of compensation. However, as someone who:

-Holds elite status (albeit, it’s only gold)
-Bought business class tickets
-Spent several THOUSAND dollars for each ticket, and
-Was required to spend 30 minutes just figuring my flights out,

I think I should get some compensation of some kind.

So, my questions:

1.) Should I feel entitled to compensation? I’m still relatively new to flying, so I don’t know what’s appropriate (and PLEASE let me know if I’m wrong).

2.) If I am, is it to late to request something? This has happened over the past few months, so I don’t know if it’s to late.

3.) If it’s not, what would be appropriate to request, and how should I request it?

Thanks for your help. I know this is a long question, with weird circumstances (at least, to me it is).

It was definitely poor handling on the part of the AA and I’m sure a very frustrating experience. I think some miles would be appropriate. I would recommend writing a polite email/letter and asking for the miles you feel you deserve or a voucher towards a future flight but don’t be disappointed if you get back a form response and fewer miles than you asked for. At that point you’d have to decide how much effort to put into this. Good luck!