Booked a ticket on AA.com for my daughter to travel from Germany to Austin for a wedding. The itinerary was Frankfurt to Munich to Charlotte to Austin, and I even used a systemwide upgrade for the Munich to Charlotte segment. The only concern was the one hour connection in Munich.
The day before the flight I tried to check her in on AA.com, but it said she had to check in with Lufthansa since the first leg was on them. Lufthansa check-in worked, but they couldn’t issue boarding passes for the Munich to Charlotte and Austin flights.
When I called American, they said she could just get the rest of the boarding passes at the counter in Frankfurt. But when she got to the Lufthansa counter they told her they had no relationship with American and that she needed to check in at an American counter in Frankfurt or Munich.
Even though she arrived almost three hours early, there was a partial Lufthansa strike and many cancellations. By the time she checked in, there wasn’t enough time to go to the American counter in another terminal.
Since she only had a one hour connection in Munich, it looked like she would definitely miss the flight because she didn’t have the boarding passes and would need to change terminals and check in again.
I called the American Executive Platinum line several times asking if they could switch her to a later American flight from Frankfurt to Charlotte, which had plenty of open seats. But they said it would count as a voluntary change and cost about $1200, even though it was clear she was going to miss the connection.
After many calls with no help, my daughter was already on the flight to Munich. I managed to reach an information desk at Munich airport and they transferred me to the American Airlines check-in desk there.
Luckily the agent there was incredible. She was able to check my daughter in and issue the boarding passes just before they closed the check-in. She told me my daughter had to get to the gate about 20 minutes before departure and suggested taking the bus between terminals because it was faster.
My daughter landed with only about 20 minutes to spare and rushed to the bus. The agent even called me again to check where she was and gave directions as she moved through the airport.
At one point she ended up at the wrong passport control and had to run to another one. With only minutes left she finally reached the right terminal. The gate agent actually ran to meet her and got her onto the plane just in time.
A few minutes later the agent called me again to say she made it onboard and they had already closed the doors. The plane even left about 10 minutes early.
That American Airlines agent in Munich went above and beyond and really saved the trip.
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