Hi,
I would like it if someone can tell me what my rights were regarding compensation for the following situation.
Note: I was traveling with my wife and 5 children, ages 12,10,7, and 3.5 twins
We had a 12pm flight from Chicago to JFK that got cancelled because of weather.
They automatically put us on a 430 PM flight to La Guardia (fyi, I specifically did NOT want to fly to La Guardia when I booked my flights. I paid extra for JFK because LGA is not an easy airport to deal with) but put us on standby flight 130 going to LGA. They put all 6 of our luggages on that stand by flight, saying worse case, if there's no room for us on the 130, at least we have seats on the 430 and our luggages will just wait for us for 3 hours in LGA.
When we tried getting on the flight, everyone refused to take us on since we were 7 people and we would not be sitting together. They didn't let us split up our seats (within the plane) because we had little children. So they adviced us to just stick it out until 430 which was OK with us. We didn't care too much.
Now we're on the 430 flight. 10 minutes before arrival, the Pilot says we're not able to land in LGA and we're landing in JFK (our original destination!!!!!) the problem is - OUR LUGGAGE was at LGA from the 130 standby flight!! Of course we were stuck on the plan for 2 hours because we didn't have a terminal or crew to bring the plane in.. by this time, it was 10pm
We went to baggage claim hoping for them to deliver our luggage to my dad's car, since he was waiting for us in LGA. They told us it's not possible because our luggage was in Boston since the 130 flight got diverted there. It was 12 am and they told us we'd get our luggage delivered the next day. We got an email saying they located our luggage and it would arrive Fri around 1pm. It came Shabbos night, 11 pm...
What is American Airlines suppose to give us, legally? We don't know what to ask for. I asked them for compensation, they said it was the "act of Gd" and they couldn't give us anything.
I booked the tickets on Sapphire Pref Card, they told me we'd get $100 per luggage per day for whatever American Airline doesn't pay.
Please advise. Thanks