Sat in the airport for 12+ hours yesterday and never left.

1st - Original flight gets boarded, then we are taken off the plane and flight is cancelled due to mechanical issues.
2nd - Rebooked on another flight leaving in 20 minutes, run the length of the airport to make it and when I get there I am told its overbooked and my seat is already taken.
3rd - Rebooked to another flight, then it gets delayed later than my connection.
4th - Get automatically rebooked to Phoenix, but its an 18 hour layover before my next flight.
5th - Get rebooked to a Delta Flight at 4:30, it gets delayed 4 times and at 8:30 they pulled the plane back from the gate to test the engines due to mechanical failure.

At this point I give up, cancel my meetings, and ask Delta to get my bag off the plane. Delta guy goes down and radio's up "we have his green bag with the orange AA priority tag, send him to baggage claim and we will bring it over".

I go down to baggage claim, wait 30 minutes for them to say "No we actually didnt find it, American still has it". So I head over to American and they say "we cant find it right now, its somewhere between here and Minneapolis".

I have spent 4 hours today trying to get my refund and find my bag. They finally found my bag in Minneapolis but not I now have to wait 7-10 days for my refund "IF APPROVED".

I fly American 30-40 times a year and have never had to deal with this, but outside of a refund I feel like this is one of those instances where they should do more as I have at least 16 hours of time into trying to travel with them. Never been this angry with an airline in my life!!! And I doubt they will do crap to make it right other than give me my money back after a few weeks.

You may get a few miles out of but nothing in comparison to what it should be. I've never been able to get more than that for my clients when major issues arose.

Flying sucks...you just have to accept the issues when they happen and be thankful when a flight goes smoothly...nothing you can do about it.

Since Covid, flying has become almost unbearable. I used to fly 100+ times a year pre-Covid, and I rarely had baggage issues, delays, etc. post Covid, it's become the exact opposite. Not to mention people have gotten dumber. I hate flying now, it's a miserable experience.

Loved how you "snuck" in the priority tags

rebelag62 said:

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Since Covid (9/11), flying has become almost unbearable. I used to fly 100+ times a year pre-Covid, and I rarely had baggage issues, delays, etc. post Covid, it's become the exact opposite. Not to mention people have gotten dumber. I hate flying now, it's a miserable experience.

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Not to mention fewer flights and smaller aircraft.
The airplane storage yards in the California High Desert are full of wide body aircraft.

Long gone are those pre-9/11 days of frequent flights on large, empty aircraft.

I'm sure they can't wait to bring back the mask mandates on airplanes and restart flight attendants on power trips.

It wouldn't surprise me. If those come back I think I'm extending my drive versus fly cut off from 6 hours to 12.

Sounds like you needed an Air Tag not a priority tag

JustPanda said:

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Sounds like you needed an Air Tag not a priority tag

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We ironically bought one for our recent trip to AK. We had opted to fly a cheaper flight home from United that went SEA->SFO->DFW. Somehow United manage to only get one of our two bags switched over during the layover in SFO.

To their credit, they have automatic bag tracking in their app and I knew by about 15 minutes into our flight that one of the bags had been left. I set up free baggage delivery through the app and the bag was on my doorstep by the next afternoon. Thankfully it was coming home rather than going to a trip

Haha yeah that sounded really ******y, wasn't trying to sneak it in there like that.

They had asked what my bag looked like and I said green and they laughed and asked if it had a luggage tag or anything to tell it apart and that's all it had.

Never check a bag, especially on a business trip

sorry op...that sucks

JMac03 said:

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You may get a few miles out of but nothing in comparison to what it should be. I've never been able to get more than that for my clients when major issues arose.

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A few miles?? damn.. I had a united flight canceled back this summer, they gave me back 3-4x the amount of miles I used to book it.

JustPanda said:

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Sounds like you needed an Air Tag not a priority tag

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curious if anyone has a story of actually using one of these?

We have air tags, but I'm wondering if that while you may know where your bag is, does it actually help you get it back any faster?

it's not like you can go walk into the belly of the airport and go grab it. Or call the airline and say, I see it, blinking on my phone, in some other city. GO GET IT!

dp

sorry OP. that sucks all around

Where were you flying out of? If you fly AA 30-40 times a year you are probably EP and you already know how to pull the levers, they should take care of you.

sorry to hear. that sounds awful. I would get mad at AA but all US-based airlines are hot garbage that treat their passengers like dogs**t. I had a similar (though not as bad as yours) situation with United over the summer and they initially denied my refund request. I raised hell and they later approved it. Better late than never but that was infuriating.

Most airlines suck but AA is the worst of the big guys

62strat said:

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JustPanda said:

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Sounds like you needed an Air Tag not a priority tag

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curious if anyone has a story of actually using one of these?

We have air tags, but I'm wondering if that while you may know where your bag is, does it actually help you get it back any faster?

it's not like you can go walk into the belly of the airport and go grab it. Or call the airline and say, I see it, blinking on my phone, in some other city. GO GET IT!

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I know people that when told "We are trying to track down the exact location of your bags and we will give you an update when we find them" They have responded with, I can see they are in Denver right now because i have air tags on them. The airline was able to find the bags sooner, because the airline tags were damaged.

I live in a place with direct connections to only about 5 cities. If I'm going to one of those, I'll usually fly. But for a connecting flight, so the vast majority of mine, I used to drive if it was less than 7 hours, I've pushed that out to about 10 now.

If everything goes correctly on a connecting flight to a destination 10 hours away, the time to leave my house to to the time I'm at my destination (away from the airport) is usually about 7 hours, so a savings of about 3 hours compared to driving.

But that assumes that everything goes as planned. All it takes is one delay or one lost bag, and then I'm probably pushed past the 10 hour drive time.

I'd rather just know it's going to take 10 hours. Plus I have my own car, and that I'm in control of my stops, bathroom breaks, food...

Once we have reliable self driving cars, I can't imagine ever flying domestic again.

aggiedata said:

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Never check a bag, especially on a business trip

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Just gate checked on AA from TLH to IAH via DFW.

Probably should have cut back on the Jai Alai beers at the bar.

62strat said:

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JustPanda said:

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Sounds like you needed an Air Tag not a priority tag

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curious if anyone has a story of actually using one of these?

We have air tags, but I'm wondering if that while you may know where your bag is, does it actually help you get it back any faster?

it's not like you can go walk into the belly of the airport and go grab it. Or call the airline and say, I see it, blinking on my phone, in some other city. GO GET IT!

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A buddy of mine got caught up in the Southwest debaucle last Xmas....his bags went to Orlando without him and were flown back and SW at Bergstrom wasn't equipped to handle the mess and had a whole room of luggage and wouldn't go look for his bag until he convinced them by showing them where it was.

I havet had to use one like that.....but I do like checking to make sure it made it on my plane.

kyledr04 said:

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Most airlines suck but AA is the worst of the big guys

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Yes they are. I'm a million miler on AA but fly exclusively Delta if possible. Hate AA.

We use AirTags on all of our flights with checked luggage.
First time we used them, our flight was delayed and then cancelled out of Austin.
AA insisted the bags were already on the way to the destination.
Looked on our iPhone and saw they were still at Austin.
Tracked them to the exact location where the bags were just sitting out in the carousel area.
Picked the bags up without anyone questioning us and I guess AA still thinks the bags are in transit...