Arrival perfect (Flight wasn't)

Whew, that American Airlines flight was the worst I've ever been on in all my years of flying. In LA for the long "hop" to England, we arrived at the gate a couple hours early. The seats slowly filled, the plane was already at the end of the tunnel, all was good. Then 40 min before the flight they announced a pilot had called in sick, and they needed another. That's the only word we got for about 2 hours. Finally they announced that we were going to have to fly to NY to get another crew to go over the Atlantic - but here's the kicker; we had to use another aircraft because this one was too full of fuel to land in NY (!?). Another 2 hours went by while they "cleaned a very dirty aircraft" and transferred luggage to it. Then another hour..... People were getting very angry but no word....the 3-4 AA people all went away and left one person there. Who never passed the word until I went up and told her to get with it. 300 passangers...just....left....to wonder, or ask individually what was up. We left about 7 hours after I arrived in LA. Then when we got to NY, it took 2.5 hours to get the fuel! And then, finally, the pilot announced "a minor cockpit problem, we have called maintenance...." Oh, and all the time transferring fuel and getting the food onboard? They only gave us a croisont about 8 hours into the flight. And didn't give me an immigration card for the groggy, bleary passport work after almost 24 hours of flying. The worse....