Thanks, so further to my posts, I called AA, got straight through no wait at all and the rep said he was an EXP Supervisor, super nice. He cancelled down the flights since we were INVOL re-routed and clearly LHR-PHX is cancelled for 4/4. He couldn't explain why we were not notified and nothing giving an indication of the changes. He's submitted the PNR for refund, he said it has to be manually processed because our ticket was paid in £ sterling. The timing he gave was 12-15 business days.

Our "orphaned" in-country flight advice from rep was wait up until the day prior as it may be cancelled, looking at it, it has been cancelled every other day almost like clockwork, so maybe we get lucky, otherwise will be credit or using our travel insurance.

Our full situation is post #75

On prefunds.aa.com the status states "We couldn't find your request..." just like another reported here. When I put the ticket number into submit a refund request each of our 3 tickets shows as "eligible for review"

So now I guess it's a waiting game, any other similar experiences that have successfully completed and if so how long?