USA Today story here.

Apparently, AA is now advising agents not to book non-elite pax on other airlines during irregular ops except in special circumstances, or with management approval. AAdvantage elites other than EXP/CK (and maybe Platinum Pro?) can still be rebooked if their delay on an AA flight would be greater than 5 hours.

I'm sure this will have the most impact on travelers at smaller stations that don't have as many AA flights, people flying AA out of a DL or UA hub, or passengers booked on odd, out-of-the-way connections, but in about 15 years of flying AA/US I can only recall one time where I was rebooked on another carrier during IROPS. If you're at an AA hub, or a midsize or larger outstation that has multiple connection points to your destination, chances are there will be another AA flight that will get you there faster than an OAL anyway. Of course, that will only help if (perhaps a big "if" on peak travel days) that other AA flight has seats available, and there's not a big operational meltdown like the PSA dispatch system outage in CLT earlier this year.

Thoughts?