Horror story this Erev Pesach on AA, trying to see what I can expect:
Background:
flight from NYC-LAX for family of 9 (2 adults, 6 ticketed children under 10yo, 1 lap). initially scheduled for 3 days before YT, was rescheduled for 6am Erev Pesach.
(spent the 2 days in between calling back, looking -unsuccessfully- for anything sooner, so I knew how booked up they were).
(mileage tix FWIW)
Friday EP morning we show up at LGA 3 hours early, hoping that, at check-in, we'd be assigned seats, hopefully not spread too far apart. At check-in, the boarding passes said to see gate agent.
Arrive at gate over an hour before the flight, no one there. first an AA employee keeps stepping up to ask for people to check in their carryons to final destination, as it's a full flight. refusing to take any other questions.
agent finally shows up about 15-20 minutes before boarding, to start with all boarding/checkin issues. she says we still don't have seat assignments.
(evidently the system auto-grouped us in exit row. but with 6/8 under age 16 they needed to relocate us. needed to find other passengers one-by-one to switch us with...)
throughout most of boarding time they're "still working on it" - we still don't have seat assignment.
here's the 'crime':
5 min before departure, everyone else already on board, they finally usher us onto the jetway. Halfway down they tell us "oops, we only have 7 seats for your party of 8. need to bump to a later flight". we had about 60 seconds before door closes to decide wether to bump us all, or to put 7/8 on this flight.
DW realized that there's no way they'd have 8 seats on a single flight anytime before YT, and offered to take all 7 on the flight herself, and I'd fly next.
So Mom is stuck flying solo with 7 little kids.
adding insult to injury, on that 1st leg, the seats were scattered across the plane, so the 3yo, 5yo, etc.. were sitting on their own.
right after they departed the agent rebooked me (as "involuntary denied") on a flight 1 hr later, and issued me a $500 credit.
who in their right mind chooses a group of 8 tix to bump over a shortage of 1 seat? who chooses that breaking up a family of little kids is the right way to handle an overbooking? WTH?!
practically speaking, is there anything more that I can push this for? if yes, what's the best way to go about it?
Topic Wiki
