Missed AA connection by minutes and they wouldn’t give a hotel

First time flying American and this one really caught us off guard.

Our first flight arrived 23 minutes late, and the connecting flight to Costa Rica had already closed boarding by the time we got there. We missed it by about 3 to 5 minutes. Multiple families were stranded around 9am in Charlotte.

They told us there were no more flights to Costa Rica that day and the next one wasn’t until 9am the following morning. Then they said they don’t provide hotels or accommodations and that we’d need to cover everything ourselves. The delay wasn’t weather related, and the original flight even left early but still arrived late.

We asked for a manager and eventually got hotel recommendations and a $12 meal voucher, which is something, but still disappointing for what turned into a 24 hour delay. What really stings is that they knew a bunch of people were going to miss the only flight of the day and still didn’t hold it a few extra minutes.

Lesson learned the hard way about tight AA connections. Definitely won’t be booking something that close again.