American airlines cancelled flight UPDATED

jpsartre

richardw wrote: »

Why 'if available'?

Because if they're not available, they obviously cannot be used. Airlines generally do not have replacement aircrafts waiting around to be used in cases of emergency, nor should they IMO.

richardw

jpsartre wrote: »

...Airlines generally do not have replacement aircrafts waiting around to be used in cases of emergency, nor should they IMO.

You're ignoring how large airlines are and that the likelihood of problems on a typical day is high.

Some european low cost airlines have aircraft in the order of magnitude of 200 aircraft, and on a typical day most will be in service on many different routes with different climatic conditions and the risk of problems is significant.

If there is some spare capacity as a percentage of such a large fleet, that to me seems a 'reasonable measure'.

jpsartre

Exactly, most will be in service. It would be entirely unrealistic to demand that an airline has grounded aircrafts placed at the airports it serves as backups. And that has nothing to do with how little or big the airline is.

richardw

jpsartre wrote: »

..It has nothing to do with how little or big the airline is...

It does because the airline has more opportunities for resourcing replacement aircraft and the 'reasonable measures' taken can be assessed in the context of the airlines resources.

jpsartre

Of course, and I'm sure that is done on a regular basis. I never said it shouldn't be done either (see post 29) so I'm not sure what we're arguing about?

Sues48

Just back from our holiday, which was great despite American Airlines best efforts!

We eventually gave up trying to get flights for our original date and reluctantly accepted the alternative flights for the following day, however, our problems did not end there. We were booked on flight from Manchester to Heathrow arriving at 10.15 and the Miami flight was at 11.15, unfortunately the 1st flight they had booked us on was a BMI flight which landed at T1 and the Miami flight was a BA flight from T5 so there was insufficent time for us to transfer from one terminal to another and we weren't able to board the Miami flight, at which point I completely lost it:eek::mad: The BA customer service staff at T5 were brilliant and when they realised our final destination was Denver they managed to get us on the direct flight at 16.05. This meant we then had 5 hrs to kill at Heathrow, we were issued with some food and drink vouchers from AA but unfortunately aren't accepted by any of the restaurants in T5 as they all only accept BA vouchers( we only found this out after spending a small fortune on a meal at Gordon Ramsey's restaurant:()

We eventually arrived in Denver 24hrs after originally planned, it cost us the cost of our hotel room at Manchester which we couldn't use, our 1st night accommodation in Denver plus the extra we had paid to reserve our seats on the original flights,the lunch at Heathrow, in addition we also had to pay an additional £250 to amend our car hire reservation.

We had a fabulous holiday despite the awful start and the day before we were due to come home my husband decided to check online to make sure our return flights were in order only to find that the AA website stated it was unable to find ourt details. After phoning customer services he was told that our return flights had been cancelled because "we" didn't turn up for the Miami flight:mad::eek::eek: Fortunately, there were still seats available for both flights but again we didn't get the reserved seats that we had paid extra for.

I don't know if we've been increadibly unlucky, but it seems so unfair that they have had our money, nearly £3000 for 6 months and can then treat us with such disregard

richardw

Good to hear BA helped you at T5

jpsartre

Sues48 wrote: »

We were booked on flight from Manchester to Heathrow arriving at 10.15 and the Miami flight was at 11.15, unfortunately the 1st flight they had booked us on was a BMI flight which landed at T1 and the Miami flight was a BA flight from T5 so there was insufficent time for us to transfer from one terminal to another and we weren't able to board the Miami flight, at which point I completely lost it:eek::mad:

I don't blame you as they booked you on an illegal connection! Very poor showing by AA and something I write to complain about.

bagand96

Glad to hear you had a good holiday, despite the travel nightmare.

You should be due 600 Euros conpensation each from American for the cancellation. Have you written to them asking for this yet and if so what did they say?

Sues48

No, we haven't yet, only got back this morning, so still jet lagged. We have requested official confirmation of the cancellation to see if we can claim anything back from our travel insurance, not sure about that as looking at the small print it state they pay out for flight delays of over 12hours only when luggage has been checked in, not sure about when the flights have been cancelled rather than just delayed.?