Incidents at Ezeiza airport

For many years I have traveled with American Airlines because of the fact that we use an American Airlines credit card that allows us to add 1 mile for every dollar spent, and because they fly every day from the New York area to several places around the world including my home country, the place that I go the most.
This year my return trip was on a flight from Buenos Aires, Argentina to Dallas/Ft. Worth, and then with a connection to Newark Airport. The total length of that trip is almost 18 hours.
At the same time they have a flight to John F. Kennedy Airport in New York, and a flight to Miami with a connection to La Guardia Airport also in New York City.
In the U.S. you can have a confirmed ticket on a flight and always stand by for another one, as long as it’s around the same time and on the same airline.
Both the nonstop flight from Buenos Aires to JFK, and the Miami alternatives were shorter than my choice was.
The logical questions would be why didn’t I chose the shorter options. The answer is also quite simple, that option was not available at the time.
So having traveled in the past and having worked in the industry like I did for more than 25 years I asked the agent if I could change my reservation to the nonstop or to the shorter connection. I was told that my type of ticket had no seats available. That is usually the answer that reservation people will give because they don't have the authority to override those decisions. The airport on the other hand does. They can move people from one flight to another with no problem.
Now to add insult to injury, or in other words to make matters worse, we are dealing with Argentinians, compatriots of mine. Why do I say this? Very simple, people in Argentina do not have ingrained in their system the concept of service. Everything is a major issue, from getting a passport to transferring the title of a car from one owner to the next. So I was dealing with back to back issues here, the lack of service from the “customer service” people and the fact that I was trying to change my reservation.
I ran into a wall of uncooperative agents from the one at the check-in all the way to the gate people. The answer was always the same: NO.
And they gave different excuses. The check-in agent said that I had to pay a penalty for changing my reservation, while one gate agents said that it could not be done because there was no time to put me on the flight because my bag was on another flight, that had been forced by the check-in agent. The last gate agent blamed the airport for their lack of cooperation.
So I ended up on the same flights that I was booked on originally, and both the nonstop and Miami flight left with empty seats.
A glorious end to my many other frustrations during my visit to Argentina this year.