Let us not forget the unfortunate crew and pax of a south american DC-8? into JFK a few years ago who were held and held due to wx who did NOT communicate sufficiently their fuel state emergency and crashed !!!!.
Maybe the AA Capt. was just having a bad day, or the nth. in a row bad day.
If you look at the Flightaware track (ref. in an earlier post) he had already done 2 circuits in a hold.
Until the full picture is revealed everything else posted here is speculation.