August 13, 2011 American Airlines Customer Relations P.O.

Box 619612, MD 2400 DFW Airport, TX 75261-9612 Dear Customer Relations Department, I am writing to describe a recent experience my wife and I had with American Airlines. I have been a customer of American Airlines for several years and have never been so dissatisfied with a travel experience on American, or any airline for that matter. My wife and I were looking forward to our trip to Zurich, Switzerland. The first portion of our trip involved flying from St. Louis, Missouri into LaGuardia Airport, then transferring to John F. Kennedy Airport for our departure to Zurich on Flight 64 on July 27th. Given this transfer, we left LaGuardia immediately after our plane landed and arrived at JFK several hours before our 6:00pm departure to Zurich. We sat at our gate for the rest of the afternoon, relieved that the weather looked favorable and our plane was at the gate being prepared for our trip. As soon as our boarding time came, the gate agent explained that the plane was too hot to board and that we would be delayed for about 20 minutes while they cooled it down. The gate agent gave us the same announcement several times, until finally around 7:00 pm (an hour after we were supposed to depart) she stated that the plane was out of order and our flight was delayed until 10:00 pm when another plane could be secured. When I asked the agent why the plane was inhabitable, she explained that a crew member had forgotten to attach the plane to the cooling system which resulted in the plane overheating throughout the day. This was extremely frustrating, particularly due to the fact that human error was the reason behind the problem. Given the fact that a new plane had to be located, prepared and boarded, we did not depart for Zurich until around 11:30 pm- five and a half hours after our scheduled departure! I would hope that errors such as this do not happen at American Airlines very frequently. Not only was this frustrating, this was an extremely expensive delay for us. Upon arriving in Zurich, we had planned on traveling by train to Florence, Italy. We had more than a three hour window between our scheduled arrival in Zurich at 7:55am and our train's departure at 11:10am. However, we missed our trains due to our extremely delayed flight. We arrived at the train station in Zurich five hours late and our train tickets were not refundable or exchangeable because 1)they were booked in advance and 2)we arrived at the train station so late after our scheduled departure. Therefore, we had to purchase two new train tickets at the price of $414.38 USD (from Zurich to Milan and Milan to Florence). This additional expense took a significant amount of money out of our travel budget while we were in Europe, preventing us from experiencing all of the sights and excursions we had planned for our trip. I hope that AA will reimburse us for these expenses, given that the delay was solely attributable to AAs gross negligence. Had an AA employee turned on the cooling system, the plane would have departed on time and we would not have had to miss our trains in Zurich. Although the first day of our trip in Europe was effectively ruined (because we didnt get to Florence until 10:45 pm, effectively losing one afternoon of sight-seeing), the rest of our trip was very enjoyable. We were looking forward to coming back to the US, and our flight on Sunday, August 7th from Zurich to JFK left and arrived on time. Again, we had a connection at JFK on our way from Zurich to St. Louis. We landed at JFK at 12:45pm and arrived at the terminal to wait for our 6:45pm flight (flight # 4503). Around 5:15pm, I glanced at the Departures monitor to check on our flight status and was shocked to see that our flight had been cancelled. I went up to the gate agent and asked why it was cancelled, and she stated simply we could not get a flight crew for the flight. Also frustrating was that I received a flight cancellation call from AA after I had been in line trying to rebook my flights for 20 minutes! Im not sure why there was not a flight crew, especially since we booked our flight almost two months in advance. While we were trying to reschedule our flights at 6:00 pm, the gate agent said there was a 6:45 pm flight out of LaGuardia that we could take to St. Louis. As it was already 6:00 pm, there was no way that we could have made it to LGA in time, so that was not an option. The next available flight for us to take was at 7:00 am the next morning out of Newark. What is extremely frustrating about this experience is that we sat in the JFK terminal for almost 6 hours, and could have easily left and gone to other airports if we would have gotten earlier notification that the flight was cancelled. The gate agent said that they typically dont cancel flights until the last possible minute while they try to arrange other flight crews. I hope that AA realizes how many customers

plans get screwed up by this type of procedure. At least give people some heads up so that they can try to catch another flight from a different airport. Again, this flight cancellation cost us about $62. Our flight the next day was on Continental and left out of the Newark airport. Because it was on Continental, and we had big bags because we were gone for 11 days, my wife and I each had to pay $25 to check our bags (Continental did not care that we were traveling internationally on AA). Again, we would not have incurred this expense if it was not for AAs gross negligence. Lastly, the gate agent in JFK gave us breakfast vouchers since we were going to have to spend the night in New York. We figured that the breakfast vouchers would work at Newark, because the gate agent is the one who gave us the vouchers AND booked our flight out of Newark. When we got to Starbucks at the Newark airport and tried to use them, we were informed that they only worked at JFK. Our breakfast ended up costing us an additional $12. My question is this: why would you give us breakfast vouchers that were only valid at JFK when you knew we were flying out of Newark? That does not make any sense to me at all. I have been a loyal American Airlines customer for about 8 years, and over the course of that time, I would estimate that I have spent close to $100,000 on flights for work, and personal reasons as well. This trip was strictly for personal reasons, and I used 120,000 frequent flyer miles for 1 ticket and spent around $1,100 for another ticket. As I stated previously, I have never had a worse experience traveling on an airline ever. On our way to Europe and coming back from Europe, our flights were delayed, and it was not because of weather, or mechanical problems, it was SOLELY because of American Airlines gross negligence. Because of your gross negligence, not only did American Airlines almost ruin what was supposed to be a relaxing trip, American Airlines cost us $476.38 that we would not have had to pay if it were not for AAs gross negligence. Although I think we should get more compensation than just the $476.38 we are out of pocket, and the 5,000 airline mile you gave to me (and not even my wife!), because of the additional stress you caused us, all I would like is the $476.38 reimbursement ($414.38 for the new train tickets we had to buy, $50 for the additional baggage check fee, and $12 for the breakfast in Newark that we had to pay for). I have been a very loyal customer of AA and recently had Gold status, so I would expect that you will do the right thing and reimburse us for all of our incremental expenses. We kept all of our receipts from the trip, so please let us know what the procedure is for submitting the expenses for reimbursement. Again, I would hope that we can resolve these grievances in a timely manner without getting my legal counsel involved. Please advise what the next steps are in this process. Sincerely, Michael Hotz AA# 8X16P88