I read sfcaligirl's sad story about her sister's fight on American, and because there are more bad stories than good about airlines, I thought I would share my shockingly positive experience.
My husband and I were scheduled to fly from DC to Tucson last Saturday for a week's vacation (yippee!!). The first flight was to leave DC at 11 a.m.
On Friday night, we get a call from AA. There was a mechanical problem with the plane for the 11 a.m. flight, so would we be willing to either:
a. leave on an earlier flight, get updgraded to first class for both legs of the flight and receive 5000 miles each in ff miles
or
b. take a later flight, get the miles and two vouchers for $250 since first class was full
We wanted to get there sooner rather than later, so we took option a (plus we were only a few 100 miles short of free tickets - now we have enough!).
We are not AA frequent fliers (maybe 2x a year) or have any kind of elite status. I was SHOCKED at how nice and accomodating they were, instead of waiting for us to show up at the airport and announcing the flight is cancelled. Even if there was nothing wrong with the 11 a.m. flight and it was oversold or something (I never checked), who cares, we were certainly well compensated.
I would also be sure to give the airline a contact number when you buy a ticket, so they can contact you if something is amiss.
Anyway, it was a great start to a relaxing vacation.