justhere

Not defending AA as I don't know all the details but that's not how it works. The plane can't take off without a crew and if they couldn't get a crew there in time due to weather, then the cancellation could very easily be coded to weather. There are multiple delay codes, +/- 100, depending on the airline. There's no way that the original crew was just 7 minutes away from timing out unless other delays occurred earlier. Once all the delays are coded, they'll have guidelines to determine if the uncontrollable delays (WX, ATC, etc) are significant enough to attribute the cancellation to WX or MX. We may not agree with their assessment but right or wrong, I guarantee that their legal department has a guideline that they feel they can defend when attributing to WX.

Think of it this way. Storm moves in during the day. Thunderstorms, etc. Crew that is flying your flight lands their previous flight right before the storm moves in. All flights delayed due to WX. 3+ hours later there's a break in the storm and crew flies their next leg to your airport but due to storms also have some ATC rerouting and are now 4 hours behind schedule. Running close on duty time but all looks good until they are about to pushback your flight and they call for maintenance. Can get it fixed in 7 minutes so crew times out. There's no other crew to fly your flight so flight is cancelled. There are at least 3 delay codes assigned to why the flight was cancelled. W# ~ 180 minutes, A# ~ 30 minutes (both due to the delayed crew), and M# 7 minutes. So yes, if there wasn't a small mechanical issue the crew would likely have pushed back in time so that they didn't time out. However, you can't attribute the cancellation just to the MX delay. It was just 3% of the total delay and had the WX and ATC not played a big part in the situation, the flight wouldn't have been close to being cancelled. So you cannot discount or ignore the other codes and only attribute cancellations and delays to the last code or only to an Air Carrier code.

You may not like it that way and you may feel that's not how it should be, but that's how it is and until the DOT changes the rules for reporting delays, it is what it is. If someone decides to sue AA claiming that AA is attributing delays that are coded to WX or ATC, etc that should be coded to an Air Carrier caused delay, I would imagine they'd have a significant hill to climb.