I was scheduled on AA 173 from LHR to RDU on January 8th but the flight was delayed then ultimately canceled. The ExpertFlyer notes show this as an "operational decision" but the inbound flight to LHR from CLT (AA 734) appears to have A/C maintenance issues that instigated the problem. AA rebooked me onto a new flight, AA 9605, which had an originally scheduled departure of 6:30am arriving into RDU at 10:30am on January 9th. This flight was also delayed due to "operational issues" and did not reach RDU until 3:46pm EST. This new flight was a special, one-off flight basically created to ferry passengers originally booked on AA173.

Question - Am I able to make UK261 claims on both flights? The first flight was canceled and the second flight had an arrival delay of over 5 hours. I haven't yet submitted claims for either flight but expect it to be a protracted battle. Expect them to try and blame ATC at Heathrow for the delay to avoid compensation, at least that was one of the excuses one of the gate agents tried to tell people.