A question of maintenance

We flew on American Airlines and except for the schedule screw-up on our Miami to Dallas flight that was caused by a well-predicted storm in Boston (stranded the flight crew but the storm had been predicted four days in advance) the flights were uneventful. I used to like American as they had decent food and they used Boeing airplanes exclusively. Well, it seems that one of the Seattle to Dallas flights arrived with a little less airplane than when it left. From Dallas News:

AA flight lands at D/FW without a wheel
An American Airlines flight from Seattle landed without a wheel under the cockpit, a company spokesman said Wednesday.

Flight 1276 landed at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport before noon and was making its way to the gate when the captain was informed that it appeared the plane had a missing wheel, said spokesman John Hotard.

The plane was stopped before reaching its gate, and the 145 passengers were allowed to leave, he said.

The pilot did not realize the wheel was missing since there was a second wheel under the cockpit, Mr. Hotard said.

No injuries or delays were reported. The wheel was found at Sea-Tac International Airport in Seattle, he said.

Makes me re-think flying AA if their maintenance is that bad... We also had another issue when flying -- my Dad insisted on flying First Class and it used to be that you would have free access to a nice lounge while waiting for your flight. We discovered on this trip that having a first class ticket is not enough (we were paying about three times the cost of the economy seats for our flight), we also had to be card-carrying members of their "club" -- membership costing about $400 per person... Like I said, time to re-think flying American...