[msbtw]

This March my wife and I booked a round trip ticket from Seattle to Chattanooga to visit my mother who was gravely ill. She died a few days into the trip causing us to delay our departure so we could attend her funeral. Working through AARP we thought that our change of departure fees were somewhat fair. However, AA charged us over $570 a piece plus the price of our original ticket to change our departure date. This was almost double the rate of the original roundtrip fare. The tickets ended up costing $930 each. On the new intinerary, they refused to assign our seats until we got to Chicago to change planes, and even wanted to charge us $990 a piece to upgrade to first class. The final insult was a seat in row 31, right next to the engine. Every person we talked to in Chicago was stone faced and rude. It was nearly impossible to talk directly to someone on the phone, and the person I did talk to was nearly impossible to understand, and our e-mails, faxes, and phone calls have been ignored so far. I'll never fly AA again, and I encourage everyone to boycott them.