Just now, I received a newly ticketed itin: MCI-DFW-CLT-BCN.

Another phone call...this time, AA says they can do nothing. They say that when there is a schedule change, they first rebook onto flights that have award availability, and only if there are no flights on any routing at all with award availability will they consider escalating to put me on other flights.

The layovers are very long...I'm not worried about a misconnect now...it just makes for a very long day when I know there will be a half-empty midday Tuesday flight nonstop to CLT.

Plus, the agent kept using "us" and "them" language in reference to AA and US metal, which is pretty damned annoying to hear as an end customer. To me, it's one airline. The fact that internally they may have bad systems or otherwise not get along shouldn't be my problem.