Originally Posted by writerguyfl

I can't confirm the authenticity of the following information. But, I used to work for a huge travel agency that sold both wholesale and retail airline tickets. I had a friend who worked in the "Air Department". Part of her job was dealing with schedule changes.

She explained that airlines purposely do not send out schedule change notifications in real time. She provided two explanations as to why airline operate that way.

First, schedule changes don't always stick. For flights months away, the airline may make multiple changes to the schedule before they finalize on the "best" mix of equipment and flight times. Instead of sending multiple schedule change notifications, they might wait until the schedule is more concrete.

Second, they don't want to overwhelm the website or the call center. If everyone is notified of a schedule change all at once, you run the risk of getting thousands of phone calls immediately. Instead, they send emails in reverse chronological order (meaning soonest first) by flight date. In theory, everyone that had a flight change on a certain day will be notified at the same time.

Again, that's just second hand information. It's also possible that American dropped the ball and didn't contact you.