After spending 6 wonderful days in Barcelona, we were supposed to come back home on day 7 but, American Airlines had a different plan. Our scheduled flight on Jan 1st was initially delayed and then canceled because of airplane issues. The plane that we were supposed to fly on, never made it to Barcelona due to mechanical issues and was diverted to Lisbon. We were put up in a hotel near the airport and was booked on a flight on the following day.

On Jan 2nd, we got to the airport, checked-in and waited to board but again there was no plane to board. This flight was canceled too. At this point, instead of automatically re-booking, the airline asked us to call customer service and find alternate booking by ourselves to go back home. What a disaster! Again we were put on a bus instead of a plane and sent to another hotel near the airport instead of back home. Fortunately, we found seats on a flight going non-stop to our destination on the following day.

On Jan 3rd, we woke up early to get to the airport but received a notification saying the flight was delayed by 3 hours. At this point, we were numb and didn’t really care about what was happening. We made our way to the airport 3 hours later with full expectation that the flight will be canceled. To our surprise, there was a plane for us to board that took off from Barcelona and brought us back home!!!

One takeaway from this experience… Never fly on American Airlines (or any american airline) to international destinations. It seemed like they had bare-bones operation in Barcelona with no capacity to deal with the issues we faced. I can imagine the same situation at most of the airports around the world. Probably a good idea to use an airline local to the country of travel. They definitely have enough staff and infrastructure to help customers when there are problems.

🗺