Letter: Warning About American Airlines Lounge in Rio

Letter to the Editor, by Anu Raghunathan

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – We live in New Jersey, U.S. and we traveled to Rio de Janeiro for the Christmas/New Year’s Holidays with our son who is seven years old and our daughter who is sixteen months.

Our son is severely allergic to tree nuts and seafood. So we make sure to take the emergency Epipen and Benadryl for all our trips and also check the food availability at the hotels.

We stayed at the Miramar Hotel (Windsor) at Copacabana beach. We had a great time no doubt.

Before we traveled some of our friends warned us about the safety of Rio and we were very careful during our visit.

On our return date, January 2, 2015, we checked-in and waited at the American Airlines (Business class) lounge.

Our flight was from Rio to Miami and scheduled to depart at 10:10 PM. My husband left us at the lounge to buy some snacks and I left our bags on the sofa as our son wanted to use the bathroom and I had to go with him and our baby girl. When we came back, our black backpack was gone.

We had our son’s emergency medication and our iPads in that bag. We noticed it only fifteen minutes before departure.

When we complained to the staff, about the STOLEN BAG none of them were cooperative and they refused to help.

We had to leave without it and our son couldn’t eat anything until we reached NJ as he was very nervous of having an allergic reaction. Also we had all our vacation pictures on the iPads.

I cannot believe that even the lounges are unsafe in Rio. We had a bitter end to our trip.
WE WILL NEVER EVER TRAVEL TO RIO AGAIN.

Anu Raghunathan