On Monday February 2 of 2015, I set out to travel on an American Airlines (booked with avios) flight from MIA to New York’s La Guardia airport. I arrived with enough time before my flight to check in. I checked in with my wife, sister, and my 3 energetic children ages 5, 3, and 6 months. Miami International Airport was terribly understaffed and I waited a while to check in as well as held up at TSA for a really long time since they had to “scan” the water I brought along for my baby’s bottle. They made me stand there 45 minutes since there was only one agent assigned to checking bags and they had to do a lab test on the water.
To make a long story short after clearing security and taking the sky train to the gate we arrived at the gate at 11:18am for our 11:35am flight. The gate was still open and passengers were still boarding. However, when the gate agent noticed that we were a large party she pulled us to the side and told us that she would be giving away our seats to standby passengers since we arrived “too late”. Aside for the fact that on the ticket it was stated clearly that the gate closes 10 minutes before departure time and we arrived 17 minutes prior the agent had the audacity to give away my seats which included my three children under the age of 5 with one being a 6 month old infant to some standby passengers whom were (understandably) upset about their flight being canceled. I understand that American had canceled 3 flights that morning due to inclement weather and that the agents were under pressure from the ever growing standby list but how dare they strand a family with three little kids in the airport all day when we all were confirmed tickets in favorite of standby passengers?
Furthermore, I pleaded with them that I had an extremely limited supply of food for our infant and that we needed to get to New York desperately but to no avail; they acted as if I were non-existent. We ended up being pushed from stand by list to stand by list all day until I realized that my kid would starve if I didn’t get home ASAP and I booked us on to a United flight which was charging over $800/25,000 miles a ticket at the airport, and left Miami at nearly 6:00 PM more than 8 hours after we checked in.
Finally, as I sit here three days later we still have not retrieved our luggage. I had most of my family’s possessions in them in terms of clothes and coats etc. I have only endured heartache and substantial financial loss from this whole ordeal.
Do I have a play? If yes what would it be?
TIA
