American Airlines review by Joe 2017-01-05

I flew with my family of 5 on Jan 4,2017 from Miami to Vail flight 2499 for a skiing trip. We departed on time and about 3.5 hours into a 5 hour flight. The pilot announced that AA had made a decision not to land in Vail do to a winter snow storm "NOT A PROBLEM" with that decision. Our plane was completely full of people heading for a ski trip. The INCREDIBLE decision by AA to head back to MIami was CRAZY. No chance to deviate to Dallas or even Denver that was open. The entire plan was EXTREMELLY upset on the poor choice and way of communication , with no regards for the huge investment on our vacation. Upon arrival back in Miami the entire plane, about several 100 people weren't assisted in any way by AA. After waiting almost an hour, they advised us to head to gate D37 a rebooking center, A NIGHTMARE of several hours that did not help. We ended up on a flight out of Miami to Charllotte that evening to head into Denver the next morning. We lost that night stay at our hotel in Vail, our lift ticket the following day and ski rental.....AA gave us ZERO vouchers ZERO with HUGE additional costs to my family. We had to pay for hotel in charlotte and dinner at airport. Never Fly AA. EDITORS COMMENT: It seems crazy to fly back to an airport that is so far from your destination but this decision generally has to do with crew and aircraft bases. If you went to another airport there may not have been enough spare crew therefore your flight would be delayed by more than what it was due to mandatory rest periods. Any delay due to weather means the airline is not liable to do anything for the passenger unless they choose to. This is the case with all airlines and unfortunately you would probably have found the same inconvenience and out of pocket expenses with all the airlines in the US. We know this doesn't change the fact that you lost precious holiday time which is beyond frustrating but hopefully it helps answer why things happened the way they did.