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I have been a happy customer of American Airlines for over a decade. It’s been my preferred carrier of choice. I’ve flown them so much, that I’ve achieved Lifetime Gold Status by earning 1,000,000 miles in about 7 years of flying and buying stuff on my Citibank Credit Card.

And my loyalty is nothing compared to the folks who achieve Lifetime Platinum (2,000,000 miles) or qualify for Executive Platinum each year (100,000 miles but in seat).

But this morning I too awoke to a story of a disabled woman who had to physically go to the airport with her 7 grandchildren because American would not re-route her over the phone.

The NPR story is just a testament to the pain some folks are experiencing.

"They said that we had to come here to the airport to get everything straightened out, that they wouldn't do it over the phone," she says. Carter's flight to Austin, Texas, was canceled Wednesday. She's sitting in a wheelchair, with her infant, 2-year-old and 4-year-old grandchildren all hitching a ride.

"Even when I told them I was handicapped, and I said my daughter's going to have to come and she has seven kids, a newborn baby, she said she was really sorry but that was all they could do," says Carter, one of tens of thousands of passengers that American Airlines has been apologizing to this week.

This brought chills to my spine and vivid memories of how Alaska Airlines abandoned us in Mexico back in January.

Jeff Jarvis believes we’ve reached a tipping point. I think I’d agree.

You simply can’t treat people this way and survive. We all hate the airlines. We hate the experience on the plane and in the airport. We should fear for our safety, given American’s shoddy (and, one wonders, fraudulent) maintenance work. (As the Times said this morning, at least the FAA is doing its job.) The airlines never see themselves as our advocates, friends, servers; no, they are our prison wardens and enemies as they fight down legislation that mandates they should give us the crudest amenities a prisoner would get: clean water, air, and a toilet. The economics of the industry as it is being run today are unsustainable. And apart from the all-business-class airlines I try to fly every time I can (Eos, Silverjet, and there are more coming), there is not one visible bit of innovation — not one attempt to get out of this mess — visible in the industry.

This is borderline criminal on the part of the airlines.

Right now American is focused on fixing their planes to make them airworthy. It might not matter in the end, cause my guess is the relationship with their customers will be broken for a long time.

BTW, American does MD-80 maintenance for many carriers that have MD-80s, so I suspect after they inspect all their planes, the international carriers will get hit with the same problems (those that have MD-80s).