My wife and I arrived at Ben Gurion airport at 1030pm for a 1220am flight this past Sunday night. My wife had just sprained her ankle before getting into the car to the airport and we were looking for a wheelchair for her. There were no American Airlines representatives in Terminal 3 at all. This was after all airport security personnel told us it was the airline’s obligation to provide us with one. Is this true??
We had to walk very slowly and the counters were extremely difficult to find as there was no AA logo on any counters but we were told by security to go to counters 55-60. There were absolutely no AA employees anywhere to be found at the counters. We saw Delta and United a few counters away still operating for their earlier flights to NY but not a single AA employee. At around 1055pm we were able to have the airport information desk contact the AA Gate. After multiple attempts the gate picked up and the gate agent said the check in closed 90 minutes prior to 1220am which they said we missed 5 mins earlier (we had been there prior to that time and it was already closed anyway and the AA website says Tel Aviv check in is until 75 mins prior to departure (
www.aa.com/i18n/travel-info/check-in-and-arrival.jsp). This was still almost 90 minutes prior to the 1220am flight. They refused to send any employee back to check us in even after we explained we needed a wheelchair and were within the stated check in times. We tried to call AA but the wait time was hour and a half. We got a call-back from them while in the air to NY..
There was no one was there to explain our options (such as boarding and sending luggage on next night's flight; going via Europe; etc.) and needing to get back to NY ASAP with an injured wife we went to EL AL and were able to buy tickets at 1130pm for their 1AM flight to JFK for $1,800/ticket. Prior experience with AA has been great but this was truly horrific. My wife was crying in the terminal for an hour. Can anyone help with best way to approach this with AA. We have our El AL receipts which show the purchase time of the tickets. I must say; El AL gets a bad rep but they were amazing to us in a tough situation. They got us a wheelchair right away even before we purchased tickets and we had a man named Moshe give us drinks and tell us his life story about making Aliyah from Mexico as he escorted us to the gate. Can we make a claim against the airport for lack of wheelchairs at terminal? I’d really just like compensation from American for the El AL flights for their abandoning their check in counters early
