Originally Posted by
sethb
That's not my experience. Often (OK, once a year or so) an airline has changed a flight AAA-BBB-CCC to some other routing.
I'm making no comment on what the airline will do, I'm saying what they _should_ do.
Airlines are allowed to get away with these sort of shennanigans all the time. Cancelling an entire ticket if someone missed the first (or any other) segment is another example of the difference between what should happen and what does.