Curacao and American Airlines

Curacao is an amazing island. When my husband and I tell people where we vacation they always respond with “what?” Exactly! It was a trip many people we know have not been nor heard about. Curacao is off the coast of Venezuela and is part of the Netherland Antilles that also includes Aruba. The water was crystal clear and the island is also out of the hurricane belt. I highly recommend visiting Curacao. It is nothing like American owned islands. In the seven days we were there we only came across one beggar. Tony and I snorkeled, hiked in caves, did lots of swimming, shopping, and met awesome people from the US, Austria, and Holland. We felt so safe and even rented a car one day to explore.

Snorkeling and hiking at the caves

Swimming at the beach

My flight home was very eventful. We got to the airport on Tuesday to a mess. The flight was delayed due to mechanical issues in our plane in Miami. They told us we would not make our connecting flight in Miami and would have to stay the night. The agent revised our schedule to leave Wednesday out of Miami. An hour later our flight was cancelled and we had to stay in Curacao another night. Okay…I was not too upset about this. American Airlines put us up in a nice hotel, Renaissance by Marriott, in Curacao that was right downtown. The other Marriott we stayed at was about a 10 minute car ride away. We were upgraded to a suite at the Renaissance because of my gold status with Marriott. We decided to go to happy hour after getting checked into the hotel. We ended up with a table full of new friends we met on the island. We felt like locals! The bad thing…we ended up enjoying happy hour until nearly 11 PM and I did not have dinner. That buffet at the hotel was pretty good and helped keep the five glasses of wine I had down. I think that night was actually the best night we had on the island.

Downtown Curacao

The next day we get ready to go back to the airport. We get there and again our plane is delayed. This time by two hours for mechanical problems as well. We get to Miami and our next plane to Raleigh is boarding as we land. For those of you reading this that never flew international you have to pick up your luggage in customs and check it back in the US flight. STUPID!!! We missed our connecting flight and were stuck in Miami overnight. The Regency we were put up in was a shit hole. I was scared to touch anything.

Thursday, back at the airport. Our flight is delayed by 2 ½ hours. American Airlines would not provide us any customer service. Any time we asked for something we were told they could not help us and to email aa.com. Tony missed two days of work because of this incident, we had to pay our dog sitter more money, more money out of pocket for food because their vouchers did not cover everything, international calling fees for having to call the dog sitter to stay extra days, and internet fees at the hotel in Curacao. I think I covered everything and it ended up costing use a couple hundred dollars because of their mess. Our compensation that just came today…a measly $400 in vouchers. I got $500 from United just for them adding two hours onto my layover in Chicago because they consolidated flights. I am beyond disgusted. I would have at least appreciated my international calls to AA to be covered since I had to use that to call them after they screwed up my flight reschedule. I am probably going to write back and complain that is very little considering every thing that happened and let them know what United did for me on such a small issue. Right now American Airlines is on my Suck It list with Samsung.