Follow up with AA paid off

[nickis]

Thought I'd share our experience, in case in might help others.

We have 2 weeks in Curacao every other year, so our trips are planned well in advance! I got my mom an AA ticket from the UK using FF miles and paid for 3 other AA tickets, plus an infant with no seat, flying from the US (after our originally booked flight with Continental was part of the "seasonal cutbacks" and was cancelled). We were scheduled to fly out on Oct 18th and Hurricane Omar hit Curacao on Oct 14th. The Sea Aquarium Resort did sustain damage which we watched happening on their pool webcam and on the 15th the resort called to say they would be closed for our upcoming week! That's when the fun started!

The Royal Resorts was extremely accommodating...can't say enough good things about them. They offered to immediately switch us to Cancun for the same weeks, or reschedule for Curacao at a later date. We love out trip to Curacao, so Cancun wasn't an option for us.

Re. the airfare. Curacao was not on the AA "list" of effected destinations, and as Curacao is "outside of the hurricane belt" (yeah...right!) we didn't have travel insurance, so all the change fees were still effective.

We had to rebook our trip for when I could get a FF flight from the UK, so that put us out to June 09. Which meant:

1) Paid $150 to reinstate mile to the frequent flyer account, because the rescheduled travel dates were greater than 1 year from the original booking
2) Used 20,000 extra miles to fly the same itinerary in June
3) Needed to pay $150 each purchased ticket (x3) for flight change fee
4) Had 3 tickets that couldn't be used for booking the rescheduled flights because the new travel dates were greater than 1 year from the original booking
5) Required to purchase a seat for a child on the new travel dates, because she was under 2 on original travel dates, but will be over 2 at the time of the rescheduled travel.

I was feeling very sorry for myself and couldn't believe our much planned and anticipated vacation had become such a financial mess! I had no luck going the supervisor route to get some type of accommodations or understanding on the flight fees issue. So as a last resort I typed up a letter and faxed it to customer service, indicating that I was surprised Curacao wasn't on their hurricane impact "list" and stating all my rebooking issues above.

Well...what do you know...it actually got results. AA sent me evouchers for $100 each seat, which are valid for a year, which I thought was a very fair compromise. I can't actually use the one for my mom as the evouchers are for travel originating in the US and she lives in the UK. But still....$300 worth of evouchers definitely helps to soften the blow of missing our vacation, and the cost of rebooking.

So...AA came through for us after a little persistence. It just shows it's worth a try and I think AA provided great customer service in this case!

[x3 skier]

Glad to hear it. My experience is that if one is reasonable about any issue involving air travel, one can usually get some measure of assistance from the airlines. If one rants and raves, one is much less likely to get any help at all.

The few problems I have had with the airlines in my many many years of traveling (4 million miles and counting) have been resolved quite satisfactorily. Sometimes right away and sometimes after a bit of polite persistence.

Cheers