I'll try to stick to the facts in my tale of woe. April 29 husband and I fly Boston to Heathrow on AA then Heathrow to Istanbul on BA. We are scheduled to return on reverse route on May 14. Husband is on FF ticket; I am on ticket for which we paid $714.60.

May 5 we are in Urgup, Turkey and husband gets VERY sick. He is eventually hospitalized at University Hospital in Kayseri and has surgery on May 8. He is hospitalized until May 19 (he has recovered and is now in great health!!)

May 10 I call AA to cancel scheduled May 14 return. May 18 I call AA to rebook flights home. I am told that my ticket will be reissued at no charge because delay was due to a medical emergency. AA books return BA Istanbul to London on May 23 and AA Heathrow to Boston on May 24.

Get to BA at Istanbul airport---no record of tickets. Finally am told I will have to buy a ticket. My Istanbul-Heathrow-Boston ticket costs 1441.37 euro!!!! Appears on credit card bill as $1920.37.

Get home and send details to AA customer service asking for refund of the $1920 since my ticket was supposed to be reissued at no charge. They eventually pass my letter on to AA refunds. MId-July I get credit card statement showing AA credited me for $314 on July 5 ( I would guess this is half of the actual cost of my original ticket minus taxes.)

I am not a happy camper. I believe AA owes me another $1600. When I try to call the refund office I eventually get a message saying "all the agents are busy, please call again" and then it terminates the call. I've tried this twice with the same results and since it's not a free call I don't feel like continuing what I think is an exercise in futility.

So I assume a letter is my next step. Just to the refund address in Tulsa? Anyone have a better address? Like the president of AA?? Or better advice?? I'd really appreciate any thoughts. Thanks.

My suggestion would be to write to the refund address in Tulsa. Some would suggest writing to a higher official, but my experience is, when you initially write to a higher official, you risk getting some bureaucratic hackles up, and the subject expert may be unwilling to exercise whatever discretion they have. I base this opinion on many years working for the federal government. Some people will write to their congresscritter or the President, rather than to the agency that makes the actual decision. These people labor under the delusion that the President, or their congresscritter, actually reads their letter. Get Serious. It is attached to a form letter by an aide and sent on to the agency where it interrupts the work process; few decision makers will cut you a break in such a situation.

I would list the dates as you did in your posting, and point out that you had contacted AA prior to the flight date (that is important) and had subsequently been advised that there would be no fee for the change. Assuming these were etickets, I would be certain to include identifying information, such as the reservation or confirmation numbers of all tickets involved. Be civil, but also explain just what results you are anticipating. I think they are all pretty busy now because of the terrorist threats, so perhaps you should not anticipate an immediate reply.

I don't know if you are within the window where you can dispute a charge on your credit card, but if so, you might want to initiate that process before you are delimitted. You should also check the terms of your credit card; a few offer ancilliary benefits that perhaps could cover your situation.

Good luck.

Maggie....Complicated? That might be putting it mildly.First,I'm not sure you'll get anything else from AA.If I am reading your post correctly, BA issued the ticket from Istanbul to London to Boston,right?Even tho they are OneWorld, I havent heard of an instance where one airline in an alliance has refunded the partners' ticket.In this case, AA actually refunding a ticket that BA issued.And thats not to say that it cant happen.At some point in time, it appears that some communication with BA is going to have to happen.The only advice I can offer is to be patient.The amount of credit you received is probably as you suspect.Can you dispute the charge of the ticket BA issued you in Istanbul? I doubt it.You flew on the ticket didnt you?I think it would be important to point out to anybody who responds to you that you had no option in Istanbul to deal with anyone other than BA since AA has no presence there.Best of Luck.

I believe, but I'm not sure, that AA does have a city ticket office in Ankara, but that's neither here nor there.

I agree with <b>BeachBoi</b> on this one. This is going to be complicated. You will have to get 2 corporations to talk to each other, and 1 will need to take a fall. It's difficult enough to accomplish this when you could actually deal with both, face to face, and they are located next to each other, but 2 different countries, and the mail/phone thing - ouch.....

I would take the advice above. Be patient, persistent but stay calm. This will take time and there is no guarantee that it will be totally resolved in your favor. I wish I could give you some more info, but this one has me stumped.

All I can say - GOOD LUCK!

I meant - ticket office in Istanbul, not Ankara....

Also, after re-reading your post I do have one question. After BA told you that they don't show a booking, why didn't you call AA before purchasing a ticket from BA? The phone call would have been a lot cheaper than buying a ticket. Better yet, I would try to see if BA TA could have called, but if not, than I would definitely call myself.

Thank you so much for your responses. I'm drafting my &quot;calm, cool and collected&quot; letter to AA refunds.

I debated protesting the BA charge when it showed up on my credit card statement but I felt that for BA it was a valid charge and that my disagreement was with AA.

AA Frequent Flyer asked about why I didn't call AA from the Istanbul airport--good question. My recollection is that the BA people did actually call AA but couldn't get results. I am the first to admit that the whole scene at the Istanbul Airport is sort of a bad dream----husband not long out of major surgery, in a wheelchair, I thought I had arranged everything and then the bottom fell out. I was probably not at my planning/organizational best!!

I truly appreciate all your help and will let you know what happens. And I never lose sight of the fact that the most important thing is my husband is home and in good health. The rest somehow always works out.

My sympathies for your predicament. More importantly, great news on your husband's recovery! That said, perhaps because I scanned through the posts, did the charge show up on your credit card from BA? Have you called BA or only tried AA? The reason I ask is I had an incident in May involving AA &amp; BA. I assumed AA was the &quot;go-to&quot; airline as our tickets were issued through them. To get a refund (not the same scenario as yours, granted), AA insists that it's up to BA to refund what's due. It's clear on BA's webiste that there's a window of time to apply. BA's window of time is less than AA's window of time so I was out of luck. I realize this isn't really the same scenario at all, and probably isn't much help...just thought I'd throw it in to the mix. Good luck!

It sounds like AA did not reissue your ticket for the different return date, but credited you that amount of your original ticket. That's pretty surprising in any case. So you purchased a one way ticket home from BA, and used it. I don't see any refund coming. Any chance you had travel insurance? I know Travel Guard has reembersed friends when the unforseen medical problems came up and plans had to change.

I wanted to close the loop on my tale with a happy ending. Five months and five letters later I came home today to a credit card statement which includes a FULL REFUND from AA for the balance of the ticket I had purchased from BA!!!!! I was getting ready to write letter number six this weekend and had decided I would move up the chain to some corporate level. But thankfully that will not be necessary.

Frankly, if it had been less money I probably would have given up awhile ago but $1600 is a hefty step towards the next trip.

Thank you all for your helpful suggestions. I have no idea what turned the tide but I do think following the suggestion of pointing out that AA has no presence at the Istanbul airport may have helped.

In any case, we are happy in the OB house tonight---husband is healthy, we made great friends in Turkey under difficult circumstances and now we will begin planning this spring's adventure (hopefully with no hospital stays!)) Thanks for your help.

Thanks for advising how your saga ended. Great news about your husband's health, and how nice that you got the refund you asked for.

Hi. We had a similar problem last Friday, but it's between American Airlines and America West. We had an outbound flight on America West and the return flight on American. American was the ticketing airline-they charged my credit card for the entire original ticket. When we attempted to check-in for the return trip, American claimed that the eticket (theirs) had been exchanged by America West and made us purchase a new ticket for the exact same flight and seat. America West said that all they did was reroute the outbound flight because of a delay and couldn't even touch the American portion. Would you please post the addresses to which you wrote your letters? Thanks very much.

Boy, that must have left you speechless. Sure seems like someone somewhere messed something up.

I started with American Airlines Customer Relations, PO Box 619612 MD 2400, DFW Airport TX 75261-9612, FAX #817-967-4162. There's also an email address on the AA website. I faxed a letter (fairly long and detailed) and also sent an email summary. When they responded they had passed me on to American Airlines Refund Customer Service, PO Box 582880 MD 755, Tulsa OK 74158-2880, FAX 918-254-3967. Never found an email for them and forget calling---no 800 # and you just get cut off.

I had gotten a list of corporate execs from the AA website (search under something like corporate officers) and was going to move onto one of them if I hadn't gotten my good resolution.

A couple of things to know---it takes them about 30 days to respond to any correspondence, and when they credited my account I received no notice from them, the credit just appeared. I always tried to be factual, as concise as possible and professional. Patience and persistence!! Good luck.