Originally Posted by
kb9522
But my favorite reason is that the mechanical issue is all an elaborate ruse and Doug Parker personally instructed the crew to make sure mdkowals' flight was delayed.
Nice strawman.
Since AA consistently ranks as the worst of the majors in on-time performance, OP is raising an entirely reasonable concern. Sure,
maybe there's nothing AA could have done better, but maybe they screwed up and could have fixed the problem overnight without incurring a delay as well. Obviously none of us has complete information, but looking at the overall stats this is an area where AA is far from perfect.