Originally Posted by
star_world
The aircraft shown on the flight status is the one currently scheduled to operate the flight, not originally. Look at the same flight today - the inbound flight arrives from BOS around 40 minutes before the flight to MSP departs, plenty of time with an E170.
In your case, it appears the aircraft was switched to resolve another issue somewhere in the system. But because you have more information than you did before, you assume it's idiotic planning.
It's a delay - but the 1 minute between the flights that eventually got scheduled clearly wasn't the original plan.
This is one area that I think you have to give UA, well United.com, some credit. UA is generally very late to post delays, e.g. if your inbound aircraft is 30 min late UA won't post your flt as delayed until ~30 min before departure when they can't board. I feel like other airlines do this as well.
However, at least you can view where your inbound aircraft is coming from and it's status. I don't know of another airline that does this so unless you look at 3rd party flight trackers you won't really know the situation. It is not perfect and has it's bugs but at least it's something as opposed to nothing.