American Airlines review by meltem 2014-09-09

We were going to St Louis from Los Angeles on flight number AA 1686 .We boarded the plane as scheduled to take off at 7:40 am and after waiting about an hour the pilot announced that our flight was cancelled due to a technical problem. He also said that they were going to find another plane and asked us to go back to the waiting area. We were then told we should talk to the customer service. We waited until 3 pm in line because there was only one customer service representative and it sometimes took her more than an hour to resolve a single customer's problem. It was like torture. When finally it was our turn, she offered us a flight first to Charlotte which would take off at 12:30 am wait there for a few hours then take another flight to St Louis. I asked her to upgrade my ticket to business but she said she cannot do that. We were so tired I told her I cannot wait until midnight and that I wanted to fly directly to St Louis. I told her that I want to stay in LA and take the next flight tomorrow to St Louis. . She gave us a voucher to stay at the Holiday Inn Hotel and also voucher for food . I was so tired I did not check what she gave me and realized only at the hotel that she gave one room for all four of us. We are a family of four and my husband is 6'7 and my son is 6'5. It was another torture trying to fit in those tiny beds and sleep. The food voucher was another disaster, only $12 lunch per person and there was nothing on the menu you could eat with that much money. I had to spend lots of money at the airport during our wait. One rep brought a cart full of water bottles and drinks and the customers in the line asked for drinks; they did not even offer water to us. I missed my son's orientation in St Louis, had to spend lots of money for the terrible and outrageously expensive airport food, missed two days in a much nicer hotel in St Louis which was prepaid, had to sleep in a tiny bed, had to pay extra for dinner, breakfast and lunch at Holiday Inn, etc etc. On top of this when we went to the airport the next day, we could not do online check in because the customer service rep did not do a proper job and our tickets showed the Charlotte flight which was long gone. We had to find the right person to fix it which was another experience that took a long time and almost missed our flight.