American Airlines - A Rant

Hopefully no one will take offense at this but I need to rant about American Airlines. Out of the 7 major airlines, they are the only one that did not make a profit last year and I think they are trying to make up for that!

Scenario history (I will keep it as short as possible):

Last year, we flew to the east coast. Two parts of the three were flown on American Airlines. We voluntarily got bumped in Chicago because we had a loooong lay-over on the next leg. We each (DH and I) got $300 vouchers towards a future flight.

Current scenario:

We are going to Vegas. We booked our flights on American Airlines. We have to drive 3 hours to the airport that they service to be able to use the vouchers. DH is flying home earlier than I am so he will drive the 3 hours back and for my flight, I booked a puddle jumper on Alaska Airlines.

Are you still following me?

Here is what has happened...

American changed my flight time for later. I would've miss my puddle jumper and have to wait 5 hours for another flight. So, we called American and changed my flight (instead of leaving Vegas at 10, now I have to leave at 6:30 in the morning).

Then Alaska Airlines changed my puddle jumper to later so we called American to see if we could change it back to the original. They wanted $90 to make the change saying only the first change was free (even though it was because of them changing the schedule). If we cancel the flight, they will credit us $17. Hmmmm.

So then, we decided just to use miles (on Alaska) to get me home so I can fly with my co-worker, won't have an 8 hour lay-over and won't have to fly through Los Angeles.

Here is the really crazy part:

We called American to let them cancel me off the home-bound flights (so they could re-sell the seats). We were told that they could not cancel part of the flight. They would have to cancel the whole booking, re-book the one-way to Vegas, charge us for that and then issue us a voucher towards a future flight for the balance. That really floored me. We did tell them that I just won't be showing up for the flights.

I do realize that I am flying basically for free due to the initial voucher (I did have to pay $2.65) so don't feel too bad for all of the hassle we are going through. I will have to see if American posts a profit for 2nd quarter 2011. Flying, in general, has gotten to be somewhat of a hassle.

How do you feel about flying these days?

Thanks, from The Tortoise's Weigh, for letting me get that off my chest!