Airline Refusing Reimbursement - Any Legal Standing?

Location: Los Angeles, CA

Hi all - my wife and I ran into an unfortunate situation with an airline, and we're unsure if we have any legal basis for pursuing a case in small claims court. Thanks in advance for any advice anyone might be able to offer!

TLDR: an airline's employees instructed us to purchase new tickets and assured us that the tickets would be fully reimbursed by the airline. Now the airline is refusing to reimburse us. The airline has openly admitted that they have verified that their employees assured us we would be fully reimbursed. However, the airline also claims that because their conditions of carriage has a clause that "no agent, employee or representative of Carrier has authority to alter, modify or waive any provision of these Conditions of Carriage", anything we were told by their employees is essentially meaningless.

Full details:

We booked tickets for our honeymoon with an airline. The tickets were for a round trip with connections (total of 4 legs). On the day of departure, the airline made a last minute cancellation of our initial flight. They notified us by email ~8 hours prior to our departure time. The email informed us that the next available flight was the next day, ~12 hours later than the original departure time. The email did not provide any information on what would happen with our connecting flights to our final destination. We were concerned because our entire trip was only 5 days in length, and delaying our initial leg would likely lose us at least 1 day, if not more due to new connecting flights.

The airline's website provided absolutely no information on the cancellation. The airline's phone line was closed because they are not open on weekends. In attempt to get information, we figured our only option was to go to the airport to try and speak to someone in person.

At the airport, we met 2 employees of the airline at the check-in counter. One of these employees has the title of “Customer Service Supervisor”. These 2 employees were very empathetic to our situation. They kindly attempted to re-book us on another airline’s flight that was departing around the same time as our original flight (this was the only other alternative flight that day to our destination). This would allow us to still make it to our connecting flight and keep our original itinerary. Unfortunately, the alternative airline’s flight was near capacity, so the agents were having difficulty rebooking.

At this point, the employees instructed us to go to the alternative airline’s check-in counter in person to try and obtain tickets there. They assured us that if we were able to purchase new tickets there, the full cost of the tickets would be reimbursed to us by our original airline. We confirmed this point several times before departing the check-in counter.

We were fortunately able to purchase new tickets with the alternative airline at their check-in counter, albeit at a very expensive price because of how last minute it was.

Afterwards, we then went back to the original airline’s counter, and again spoke with the 2 employees, who again confirmed that we would be fully reimbursed. The employees instructed us to file a reimbursement claim online through the airline’s website. I did so that same day.

After we returned from our trip, we again went to the airline’s counter and spoke to the same 2 employees. They again reassured us that we would be reimbursed. They provided us with their full names, business card, and told us to CC them on any correspondence with the airline’s customer service team to help corroborate our case.

Unfortunately, now the airline’s customer service team is refusing to reimburse us. They sent me an email today stating “In order to verify the statements made by our agents, we contacted our Stations Manager. From what we received, there was indeed a promise of reimbursement but with no further specifications. In that regard, we would like to mention that "no Agent, employee or representative of Carrier has authority to alter, modify or waive any provision of these Conditions of Carriage."

My question is whether we have any legal standing here. My point of view is that we were simply following the instructions of the airline’s employees (including a supervisor), and that we were given assurances at 3 separate instances in time by the employees. Moreover, we had no other source of information other than these employees, because the airline's website had no information and phone line was closed.

Their argument seems to be that their conditions of carriage essentially state that anything that an employee tells you is basically worthless. This doesn’t seem right to me, but I’m wondering if the law would see them as in the right.

Thanks a lot for any advice you might be able to offer!