Don't fly American Airlines!

Warning - rant ahead

They'll wait until the last minute to delay your flight so you rush through an ice storm to make it to the airport on time only to sit around and wait at the gate with an energetic toddler and preschooler.  They won't hold your connecting flight for you even though there are 11 other people on your plane trying to make the same connection.  They'll somehow manage to get your bag on your original flight so it gets to the airport five hours ahead of you.  Then they'll lock it up, go home for the night and tell you it's Hawaiian airlines responsibility to send it to you (since you had to switch to one of their flights to make it home).  Then they'll refuse to answer their phones so even though Hawaiian airlines is trying to send you your bag they can't because American airlines has it locked up at the airport.

I'm really glad that I'm at home dealing with this but I can't even imagine what would happen if I was a tourist trying to enjoy my vacation in beautiful Hawaii only to have to deal with this.  With the state of Hawaii's budget problems and the hit the tourism industry has taken due to the economy the last thing it needs is American Airlines turning what should be a trip to paradise into a stressful situation.

In all our years of travel (okay it's not that many years but in the last two years I've taken a lot of flights to the mainland) I've only had one other time where our bag was delayed and that was when there was basically a blizzard blanketing the entire northeast.  On this trip home American Airlines "lost" my bag BOTH times.  In the future I will be rethinking booking on American Airlines, I'm not sure saving $20 on plane tickets is worth the hassle of trying to deal with them.