WASHINGTON — A local family said they suffered a Christmas travel nightmare, but this one wasn’t on Southwest. It was on another airline: American. And this one includes a canceled flight, which turns out, wasn’t canceled after all.
Andrew Miller and his son Daniel were getting ready for their Christmas Eve flight from Regan National Airport to Louisville, Kentucky when the dreaded text message came.
“It just said canceled,” Daniel Miller said.
American Airlines had canceled their Christmas Eve flight. So, the Millers scrambled to find an alternate flight, dropping roughly $450 on new tickets, this time on United Airlines out of Dulles Airport.
But as they arrived at Dulles Daniel noticed something strange was happening back at Regan National. Their original flight, the one American told them was canceled, had been un-canceled.
Daniel watched on his app, as the flight American told them would never even take off, landed virtually on time. All as they waited to board a later flight back home.
“It was insulting to us,” Daniel said. “The that they would think that we wouldn't check it or anything.”
“We don't know what happened. And I don't want to make assumptions,” Andrew said. “But on the face of it, it looks like we were lied to. So I don't know what's more insulting the fact that we were lied to or the fact that they thought we wouldn't figure it out.”
WUSA9 sent multiple emails to American Airlines, as well as tweeting at the airline, asking them to make the family whole. Thursday, American Airlines agreed to do just that.
American said it planned to fully refund their canceled tickets on American, and issued American Airlines travel credits for the $450 they spent on those replacement tickets with United.
In a statement, an American Airlines spokesperson said:
“American Airlines strives to provide a positive travel experience for our customers and we are sorry for the trouble this caused. A member of our team reached out to the Millers to apologize and provide goodwill compensation, in addition to a full refund on their original unused tickets.”
So why did American un-cancel the Millers' flight, and never tell them?
The family said customer service told them because the system automatically rebooked them, the system wouldn't have placed them back on the original flight.
The Millers said that makes no sense to them because they had no intention of actually taking that rebooked flight, which didn’t land until late Christmas night missing virtually the entire holiday.
A source at the airline told WUSA9 “this situation is extremely uncommon.”