My Delayed Airline Experience

When all else fails….ask.

After I obtained my 75,000 American Airlines FF miles from the Citi credit card I decided to use them on a trip to Costa Rica.  I chose the Mile SAAver option and only spent 60,000 miles for my wife and I to enjoy a weeklong trip in Costa Rica.  I had already been to Costa Rica  before, so I was excited to take my pregnant wife along.  She was 5 months pregnant, but we knew it would be our last trip bringing him along that wouldn’t require a diaper for quite some time.

When our flight was delayed leaving San Jose the customer service attendant kindly offered me the option to stay in San Jose for another day as I might not be able to make my connecting flight in JFK.  She offered no hotel, no food, and virutally nothing else.  I was rather disgruntled and told her that we would go to JFK and decide what to do at that point.  I guess that the crew needed rest and she told me that it wasn’t deserving of any free services.  We boarded the plane and headed off for JFK.

Upon arrival in the JFK airport we were already too late for our connecting flight into Chicago.  We found a ticketing booth at JFK and found a lady who was very helpful.  I mentioned that our flight was late leaving SJO and we had missed our connecting flight.  When she told me that there was no other way home for the night I acted sad, but was actually pretty happy.  She gave us a room at the Lexington Hotel, some food vouchers, and a taxi trip to the hotel.  We rushed to the room, threw our stuff down, grabbed some food at the restaurant and headed off too Times Square. We didn’t have a lot of time, but it was a great addition to our trip.

The best part is yet to come.  So when I got home and had been settled for a day I wrote an email to the Customer Service team at American Airlines.  I explained that the flight had been delayed and my wife had subsequently missed work (A vacation day she didn’t have) and her boss had been rather disgruntled.  I had also missed a few appointments.  I requested that they give me 20,000 AAdvantage miles for my troubles.  When the email response arrived I was pleasantaly surprised…

“While we must respectfully decline your specific request, as a gesture of goodwill,
we’ve credited your and your wife’s AAdvantage® accounts with 10,000 bonus miles each.
This adjustment should be reflected in your accounts very soon.”

So, just remember that it never hurts to ask for a little benefit.

Delta Card that offers 5000 MQM so you can obtain status.