American Airlines - Slow to Pay Up

Tommo99

Hi All,

Having a problem with American Airlines. Background -

I am British but was working in the USA for a couple of months. Booked an internal return flight last October with AA. Booked online from the UK.

Flight was delayed by about 8 hours. They lost my bag. I had to replace everything, kept my receipts and followed their lost baggage procedure. On my return journey I was let into the lost luggage store after almost begging, and found my bag myself. All labelled up still. They wouldn't load it on my flight free of charge so I had to pay excess baggage as I had already checked in (I was disgusted!).

They agreed to cover costs of what I had to buy on holiday, which was about $600. VERY slow to respond to e-mails and they lost my claim so I had to start again from scratch. Eventually received confirmation in early December that my payment had been sent and would arrive within 45 days(!). It hasn't. Messaged again, but no response. Messaged them on Twitter and they said someone would get in touch. No one has.

I am sick of waiting and also slightly aggrieved that I am only getting paid the cost I incurred for items I had to purchase and nothing for my lengthy delay, shocking customer service, or inconvenience. I had only 2 full days in New York, reduced by a day due to my delay, and spent quite some time trudging around buying replacement toiletries/underwear/clothing/new bag AND didn't have my camera so got no photos of my stay. Plus I walked around in the rain without my waterproof jacket, in the sun without my sunglasses etc...

Questions:

• Can I get them to pay for anything other than the items that I had to buy (basically, can I be compensated for the delay or the inconvenience)?
• How can I get them to actually pay? They ignore all my messages.

Thank you in advance for any help!

Caz3121

an internal US flight would not be covered by EU261 as far as compensation so nothing for the delay
Reimbursement for what you had to purchase is the norm, anything else they want to give to compensate would be a gesture of goodwill only, if you have an AA account, they may give some miles
The difficulty will be working out what action you can take to expedite the late reimbursement.
Did you have travel insurance that covered the flight? (some don't cover separate internal flights)