I cannot begin to tell you what a terrible experience we had with American Airlines mainly because it gets my blood pressure going and that is the last thing I need at 12,000+ feet. Here is the gist of why we were stranded in Miami for five days.
We flew out of Dulles without any problems and arrived in Miami on Thursday at 8:30am. The check-in guy checked our luggage all the way through to Bolivia for us despite the fact that we had a 14 ½ hour layover and were supposed to claim our luggage in Miami. The only downside is that we were prepared to claim our luggage and had therefore packed some key items in our suitcases namely our port-a-crib and tent for the kids, toiletries, and warm-weather clothes. That night we went back to the airport and met the American Airlines Grim Reaper. She wouldn’t let us board because she said we didn’t have the right paperwork for Lula. We rescheduled for Sunday but there was a 10,000 person march between the La Paz airport and downtown (near the embassies) scheduled for the morning we were to arrive so we had to postpone another day.
In the meantime, our dog paperwork had expired and we had to visit a vet in Miami and the USAID office. To top it all off, The Boy had a 105.3 degree fever and MH and I got pink eye. And you may have seen from my earlier post that my Gramma Jean passed away, too. We still don’t know what the deal was with the paperwork because when we returned to the airport to depart for Bolivia on Monday night, the clerk didn’t check any of our paperwork! We are beyond frustrated and furious with AA. When we finally got on the plane they had us all seated in different rows and the flight attendants were NO help in getting seats together. The Kids were supposed to be in window seats (another inconsistent AA regulation) and no one wanted to give up their window seats on a redeye. Would they have rather sat next to a four-month-old who needed to be breastfed? The kids slept the entire way (fell asleep even before takeoff) no thanks to the jerk in front of The Girl who kept slamming his seat back and hitting her car seat. Yeah, I know, if I was in his seat, I would want to recline, too, but what were we supposed to do? He didn’t want to switch seats with us! The bright side is that MH got a stamp in his National Park Passport at Biscayne National Park and we saw part of the Miami Zoo.
