[Emichelson]

My wife and I were recently treated to American Airlines brand of hospitality and CS when we traveled POSITIVE SPACE from SAN-DFW-MIA. Sometime enroute between SAN-DFW someone, somewhere decided to change our preassigned seats together to more that 20 rows apart! As we boarded our connecting flight to MIA, the boarding agent noticed the seating change in the computer, but said "sorry, but she was "helpless" in correcting the change back to the original seating we had, but encouraged us to "beg" other passengers to move around to accomodate us once on the plane. Huh? Unbelievably embarrassing, especially since my wife is an American frequent business flyer. Then to add insult to injury, on our return flights, an agent in MIA refused to assign us seats at all even though we were at the gate 1 hour before departure! She just ****** our tickets from our hands and snapped that she will call us. Uh-Okay? Our multiple pleas to ask for our boarding passes/seat assignments were met with apathy and indifference. A quick trip to the "American Airlines Customer Service Information Desk" nearby the gate proved to be a fruitless adventure also, with no reasonable explanation offered defending the behavior by the gate agent in question. Then, once she commenced boarding, just my wife was assigned a seat while I was apparently forgotten in the last minute mad dash to seat a now over-booked flight. I had to now wait and watch while everyone else got seat assignments, then I was thrown in a seat 20 rows again away from my wife! Just like getting treated when I non-rev but I paid for this! So much for the "get to the gate early if you want to sit together" theory. I see why so many of us are ashamed of our own industry these days. All this seating debacle was in addition to a 5 hour aircraft maintenance delay due to a last minute MD-80 fleet grounding for missed maintenance paperwork deadlines, a 30 minute delay waiting for a gate to open up in DFW (I think half that flight missed their connections), then, a 2 hour gate delay in DFW on our last leg home because no flight crew available! (understaffing issues anyone?) A total of 7.5 hour s of delays accumulated by my count. All preventable had due diligence and anticipation been used. What a frustrating, stressful experience to go through for a simple domestic trip! Is this really the best the airlines can do anymore? If we don't speak up about these issues, even as a fellow airline employees, whom I happen to be, and who understand how things are supposed to work, how are things ever going to improve for anyone. I guess I'll just go back to nonreving -at least I can expect the abuse without having to pay for it first!

Capt. E. Michelson