Bright Spot in the AA Debacle

It's been widely written that American Airlines is having lots of troubles with their staff, especially their pilots, using every tactic they can to delay flights in protest of their contract terms. The result has been two big write ups in Slate and The New York times with folks experiencing horrible delays and even a 30 hour trip from Paris to New York.

I had the unfortunate luck to be on one of the "delayed" flights on Friday night. The flight was from Washington National to Chicago O'Hare. The plan was for Kelsey and I to catch the 5:00 flight and be in Chicago by 7:00 to meet up with her friend and parents who were in town for her birthday (Happy Birthday Kelsey!). We left the office around 3:30 and after getting stuck in the traffic from a motercade (#DCProblems) we made it to National and we were through security by 4:15 only to find that our flight had been delayed until 6:15.

Luckily I had purchased a 30-day Admirals Club Membership at the beginning of September to try it out so we headed straight for the lounge. The crew in the lounge was great, they kept everyone in good spirits (using spirits mostly) despite the delay.

But as 6:15 drew close my phone rang and it was AA letting me know the flight had been moved to 6:40. That turned into 7:10, 7:45, and 8:10. The delays just kept adding up as our plane was still in Chicago and hadn't even left the gate. Finally a nice lady from the desk in the club let us know that the plane had left and 8:10 would be the leave time they were shooting for.

The plane did end up making it to DC in time to leave at 8:10...but with everyone carrying on their bag we didn't actually leave until 8:40 which got us to our hotel in Chicago around 10:45.

I had planned to write into AA to complain about the delay when I got back to DC last night....but on Saturday morning I had the following e-mail in my inbox:

Dear Christopher:
You are a good customer and we let you down when we didn't get you to your destination as planned. We are so sorry! In appreciation of your understanding (and to help minimize any lingering frustration you may still have), we've credited your AAdvantage® account with 3000 bonus miles. Take a look at your account via http://www.aa.com/aadvantage in a couple of days, and the adjustment will be there. Please continue flying with us. We are committed to providing our customers with the kind of outstanding service they expect, and deserve, from us. We hope to see you aboard American again soon.
Sincerely,
XXXXX XXXXXX
Customer Relations
American Airlines I appreciate AA reaching out proactively to apologize for the delay and offer something to help ease the sting a little bit. What do you think? 3,000 enough?