BUT...if you are really lucky, there will be some kind of weather system in the area of either their arrival or departure city. Even if their flight isn't cancelled, alot of times AA will let you cancel a segment and make other arrangement for getting somewhere if you express a concern about weather and delays. So, they could call and say they are worried about weather and want to take an earlier or later flight and just request nicely that the outbound not get cancelled. When they are suggesting this, make sure it's clear that they don't want to take an earlier AA flight--perhaps they have extra time and have 'decided to drive.' This happened to me last week. I was going from DFW-ABI to see my sister graduate. Fog was holding up all the flights in, and the gate agent informed me that if I wanted to drive, I could do so and my return flight would not be affected. That was a short trip, but I suppose it could apply to a long trip. Worth a shot, since as of now, the cannot cancel at all.