American Airlines review by Scott

American Airlines is the worse airline; I would never recommend them to anyone. First off, they have very rude and very unhappy employees who went out of their way to make what should have been a happy trip into an extremely stressful, bad experience. My husband and I had several employees give us terrible attitudes and were over all unhelpful if not hurtful. We booked a round trip almost a year in advance, booked seats together online, called to make sure what their carry on policy was, etc. We felt ready to go! We got to the airport a little over an hour before the flight was scheduled to leave and the second we got to American Airlines to pick up our tickets, the attendant told us we couldn’t check our bags because it was “too late” and they had stopped checking bags for our flight. We asked how that was possible since we were an hour early, she pretended to call someone on the phone and asked them “who handles bags”? She got some response and then told us it was too late. She said we had to carry on our bag and she proceeded to open our bag and throw out our liquids, hair product, mouth wash, etc. so we could go through security. We didn’t want to miss our flight so we allowed it. We then went through security, my husband stayed behind waiting for our bags since they were testing all our baby products (diaper cream, baby food, formula, etc.) while I ran with our daughter to the gate to make sure they would accept us with our big carry-on bag. I got to the gate and a different, extremely rude attendant, told me my daughter and I couldn’t board the flight without my husband which is ridiculous because my husband and I had 2 separate tickets but ok, I waited for my husband at the gate where I wasn’t allowed to board our flight. I asked the attendant if we could carry on or “gate check” our bag and she said “of course not” and walked away as I was asking her questions. I was already extremely stressed by the situation but the way I was treated as I held my one year old, by this inconsiderate, rude employee, well simply put, it hurt. I waited for my husband and then the gate attendant went ahead and closed the gate without even telling me anything, not even a “sorry you missed it” absolutely nothing. She just made eye contact with me and closed the gate. When my husband got there the attendant said we were too late and we missed our flight. I checked my watch since the flight was scheduled to leave at 6:11am, it was 5:55! Obviously at this point I was upset, I asked her why we couldn’t board when the flight wasn’t leaving for another 16 minutes and she didn’t even say a word to me, and she just ignored me. Then the first attendant that “helped” us get our tickets came back to the gate and said we missed it. She said she would do us a “one time curtesy” and put us in a flight to Dallas and then to LAX. The flight to Dallas left around 6:45 so I asked her about our checked bags and she said not to worry, she would check them for us. This just proves that the original issue which got us into this mess of not checking our bag, would of totally been possible if we would of gotten an attendant who checked our bag. There was no need to throw away our liquids, etc. because she checked our bag anyway but we ended up in a flight to Dallas with about an hour wait to get to LAX. We were supposed to be in LAX at 7am; we got to LAX at 12pm. We missed our reservation for our rental vehicle and ended up having to make other arrangements to make it to our cruise to Mexico. The employee at the gate to Dallas from ABQ was also very unhelpful; she got mad at us for having our baby on her stroller when she hadn’t put a tag on it. I told her it was our first time flying with a one year old so we didn’t know what the process is and she didn’t bother to explain. On our flight back from LAX to ABQ, our flight time was changed and we were never notified, we happened to catch the change because I checked our flight times that morning. When we booked our flights, to ensure that we sat together since we traveled with our 1 year old, I choose our seats together but when I called to verify, she said that was removed because of the time change on the flight and they now didn’t have seats together. The nice lady next to me on the flight was nice enough to switch her seat with my husband so we could sit together. When we got to LAX, we tried to check both of our bags and they said one of our bags was too heavy so they would have to charge us extra, the scale said 55 lbs, anything over 50 lbs they would charge. They took the bag from my husband without asking if he wanted to take 5 lbs worth out of the bag which we could have easily done. The charge for the extra 5 lbs was $100 ON TOP of the $30 fee so for this one bag we had to pay $130!!! RIDICULOUS. Then my husband said we will carry on the second bag but the attendant said we couldn’t because it was too big, it was the exact same bag we carried on our flights to LAX so my husband told the attendant we were able to carry it on the flight to LAX and the attendant said “Maybe from ABQ you can carry it on but not from LAX.” Overall this has been the worse experience with any airlines we’ve ever had. My husband constantly flies for work and we’ve never had these issues with the other airlines. My family or I will never fly with this airline ever again.