[C. A. Strong]

#1908 PAP-MIA 3/15/08
#1013 MIA-DCA 3/15/08

It was a pleasant surprise to find that #1908 from Port-au-Prince would arrive in Miami 20 minutes early. Of course, American landed early (and gets credit for an early touchdown, I guess), but then we sat on the tarmac for another hour while we waited for our destination gate to clear. Apparently they couldn't move us to another open gate - even though they knew that the plane in our gate was haveing maintenance issues!

So we get in late, and are late to clear customs. But my connecting flight from Miami to Reagan was also late, so I made it to the gate with some time to spare. and no help from the AA people in Miami.

The flight from Miami to Reagan was not in sight. The gate agents could noly tell us that it was "late." They couldn't tell us if it had taken off from the originating airport or when it might possibly arrive (and depart!) from Miami. About half an hour after the plane was scheduled to depart, the gate staf disappeared. Totally. there was no one in sight.

The plane finally comes in at 11PM and takes off at around 11:30 PM for Reagan. This means that the plane will arrive at Reagan after the airport is shut down. It gets in at 2:30 AM. Allegedly,there was a thunderstorm nearby, so we were delayed coming to the gate for another twenty minutes. THERE WAS NO SIGN OF THUNDER, LIGHTNING, OR RAIN. Believe me, I was there.

We finally get off the plane, only to find that they couldn't get our baggage! Again, they claimed that there was lightning somewhere around. Many of us passengers looked around for lightning, rain, or thunder. THERE WASN'T ANY. But they waited an hour to get our baggage off the plane.

To make this worse, when we asked for a supervisor to explain why we couldn't get our baggage, we were told:
1) No supervisor was available; in fact, the baggage clerks had been calling the surpervisor, and the supervisor wasn't responding.
2) We couldn't leave our baggage and come back later - American would turn our bags over to the police as abandoned baggage, and they'd inspect it as if it were a bomb, and American refused to ship our baggage out to our destination.

So we waited, and finally got cabs out about 4:30 AM.

The end result - I don't want to fly American any more. It is inexcusable to be so unprepared for service that we can't be told when to expect an airplane in - that the gate agents can't be informed as to why a plane is three hours late arriving - that gate agents become invisible - that baggage agents and supervisors can't resolve late baggage unloading. Just a terrible experience.

Why am I writing almost a month later? First, I wanted to cool down, and second, it appears that AA may actually read this forum. Of course, they are now preoccupied with the maintenance problems.