That reminded of the time my mother and I had a trip to India, and American Airlines "lost" our tickets at our stop in Dubai. (The rest of my family left the day before). AA said they couldn't do anything about it. Our phones didn't work, and the prepaid cards the airport sold only lasted 20 minutes. Everytime we called American Airlines they had us on hold for 20+ minutes. My mom was devastated, we just spend a good bit of money on those cards to try to solve the issue. No luck. We were stuck and my mom was in tears. A group gathered around her and asked what was wrong, she explained to them and one of them offered for us to use their phone until the issue was solved. No luck with AA, and they basically told us we werw SOL. Some guy came up to us and offered to pay our tickets to get to our family.

(We had a round trip ticket back to the US which worked to get home, but not our trip to India.)

It was a fucked situation all around. I learned a few things: 1. Fuck American Airlines in every way possible 2. Switch phone to work internationally. 3. Don't forget to tell bank to keep card unlocked.