De Paris à LA

Dear Sir or Madam,

The object of this long letter is to share with you the nightmare that American Airlines put my girlfriend and I through the weekend of March 16th, 2007.

We were supposed to return to New York from Punta Cana by the flight AA 1764 on Friday, March 16, 2007. We arrived at the airport 2 ½ hours prior to departure and we stood in line for about two hours without any information provided by the ground crew. At the counter, we were finally told that the flight was cancelled due to the snow in New York.

By the way, we were really surprised to see that, despite the bad weather in North America, flights from Air Canada were not cancelled. It seems that your Canadian counterparts have more skills than you in dealing with both turbulences and customer services.

We have been really astonished by the tacky behavior that your ground crew in Punta Cana has demonstrated towards us. They were not able to provide us with any useful options. We were also surprised that your company did not compensate us in any way. To use the weather conditions as a pretext is too easy and definitely not acceptable coming from a significant company such as American Airlines.

After staying in a hotel and going to the airport of La Romana at our own expense, we were finally able to reach Miami on Saturday evening. At this point, we were both hopeful to reach our final destinations in time to go back to our respective jobs on Monday morning. Since we had been unpleasantly surprised by your inefficiency, we nonetheless decided to book on our own direct flights to Los Angeles (my girlfriend’s final destination) and New York for me. However, my girlfriend was able to book a JetBlue flight leaving from FLL to BUR, but I was unable to find anything available to JFK or LGA due to the huge demand at this time.

I also want to take advantage of this letter to let you know of this outrageous mistake the ground crew in La Romana made, and that I still cannot explain to myself. I was told that I could reach JFK from MIA by a flight operated by Turkish Airlines leaving around 7:00 a.m. on Sunday, March 18, 2007. I was even issued a paper ticket for this alleged flight. However, when I showed up at the airport in Miami on Sunday morning, I was told that this plane had never been programmed and that it was a mistake from La Romana who dispatched all the passengers from Punta Cana to this “ghost” flight.

After spending the night in Fort Lauderdale (again, a useless expense for us, in addition to the fact that we spent 300 dollars in different transfers between MIA and FLL), my girlfriend was finally able to reach Los Angeles on Sunday morning. (where she was supposed to start a new job on Monday morning. I do not think I need to stress in what kind of situation you would have put her in if she could not have made it on time).

As for myself, I did not think at this time that I was about to live the worst day of my life. I went back to MIA thinking honestly that I would be back in New York by 10 am. I was assigned on the standby list of all flights leaving for both JFK and LGA with approximately 150 other passengers, which is the capacity of a B737-800 (and you brag to own 67 of these aircraft in your fleet). I was naively thinking that you could maybe operate a flight specifically for all these stand-by passengers. I only understood much later that you did not care about us and did not mind treating us like animals.

I was stranded at the airport for 19 hours and trust me; I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemies, even American Airlines CEOs. The stand by list was composed of old people, kids, babies and people needing medications. At anytime, your crew never attempted to help us, accommodate us, or inform us of the process. Neither did they care to provide us with lunch vouchers nor water.

At 11 pm, I realized that American Airlines was just playing with me and wouldn’t take me back to New York before Wednesday, March 21st, that is to say 5 days after my original planned arrival date. I therefore booked a flight on JetBlue from FLL on Monday, March 19th and I also booked a hotel for Sunday night. I left MIA not knowing where my luggage was since we all checked them in in the morning.

I don’t need to describe in what physical and mental condition I was after spending a full day at the airport. I reached New York on Monday afternoon and after succeeding in finding my baggage in a terminal full of lost or delayed items, I swore to myself that I would never fly on your airline again.

I happen to work in the transportation industry and I am therefore very much aware of the very bad financial situation of your company. I am also very much aware that in this particularly competitive industry, what you can do to make a difference with your competitors, is to treat your customers like real customers and not animals. As for myself, I think that this behavior is suicidal. I will also make sure to promote this to as many people as possible in order to prevent them from making the mistake as I did, which was to attempt to fly with American Airlines. As I write to you, I am actually canceling my AA membership.

I am hopeful that you will find a way to compensate all the victims of this prejudice. To that extent, I allow myself to attach to this letter a complete list of the additional expenses my girlfriend and I had to deal with, which amounts to a total of $1,885.75.

I hope that you will give this letter the attention it deserves, and I look forward to hearing from you very soon.

Yours sincerely,

Olivier Robbe