Good point. On the other hand, I've had AA offer a hotel room back in the day when a morning BOS-LHR flight was delayed to the evening due to mechanical. I guess times change.
Yeah,as soon as they announced the 6am departure we all asked for hotels. They first tried to say that “there is no point anyways, you have to board again at 5:30, so you need to be at security at 4:30am.”. Then they said there were not enough hotel rooms, and they would only provide them to people who had an indirect flight, who had flown into PHL from somewhere else. Of course everyone tried to speak with them and a long line formed to speak with the one gate agent (the rest of the airport was pretty much closed by then).
At that point, I couldn’t face waiting another hour or so, and it didn’t look like I would get a room from them anyways, so I just went ahead and booked my own room in order to get at least a little sleep (there were plenty of hotel rooms available nearby).
I’ve logged a complaint with AA about it, so we’ll see.