Family asked to pay $30K after American Airlines changed their flight to another country

A family claims American Airlines was asking them to pay $30,000 after the airline changed their return ticket to leave from an airport in another country, according to a complaint filed by the family with the Department of Transportation. 

Sam Taussig claims that the schedule change forced his family to charter a plane at their own expense to another island in order to return to the United States. 

After the family purchased their tickets in January for their summer vacation in the Caribbean, American Airlines allegedly changed their flights multiple times. 

When trying to check whether his family was being seated together, Taussig noticed that their flight was leaving from St. Lucia instead of St. Vincent. There are no flights or ferries between the two islands. 

"I called American Airlines thinking this must be some sort of clerical error and spent nearly three hours with the American Airlines customer service teams learning that I have, in fact, been bumped and seven of the nine family members were bumped to another flight departing from a different country at a different airport because of an oversold situation," Taussig said in an exclusive interview with ABC News.

While Taussig said he received an email from the airline about the flight change, the notification about the airport change was in tiny print, and he missed it. 

"American Airlines was not very apologetic at all. They blamed me, the customer, for not catching this sooner," Taussig said. 

"American Airlines offered a couple of different, I think, absolutely insane solutions where they said, well, we'll have to split up part of your family and put most of you on a flight a week later, if not longer. And to do that, we're going to charge you change fees, reissuing fees, certain other fees, which were not clear to me, and new fares, which totaled about $30,000 to get all of us back. And we'd be stuck on the island for a week with no offer of compensation for hotels or meal vouchers or anything like that," he added.

The airline eventually found a flight leaving a day later than scheduled from Barbados, but not before asking him to pay thousands in change fees. 

Taussig, who refused to pay the fees, was forced to book a private charter flight to fly his family to the other island.

"We researched a private charter to get us to a third country, Barbados, where American Airlines might be able to get us out the next day from our original departure day, where they then told us that it would be $3,000 in change fees to make that happen. And [American told us] we should be so lucky because this whole situation was putting the company out $3,000, even though they originally bumped us for an overbooking situation. So all in all, where we are today is out a couple of thousand dollars. On our dime, we're flying to yet a different country to meet American Airlines to get back to the U.S.," Taussig said.

American Airlines responded to Taussig’s story by saying they were concerned with the experience their customer reported. 

"In this situation, there was obviously a significant change by the airline and the person could get an involuntary refund. And if they could construe it as being bumped, which is a little unclear, then they would also be entitled to bump in compensation,” the airline said. 

While Taussig still has not received any compensation from the airline, he hopes his story can serve as a warning to other travelers and foster change in the airline.