AA Flight 85D?
 

Connecting today at JFK onto AA17 to SFO. On the departure screen, there was a flight listed as leaving at 2:50PM that was originally scheduled for ~8:30PM. I asked about this and was told it was done in error. There is a separate AA85 still scheduled to leave at 8:30 tonight btw.

But then I found this on flightaware: https://flightaware.com/live/flight/...950Z/KJFK/KSFO

I haven't seen anything like this before.... Wish I could've gotten on it, stuck with a 5 hour layover here :( Am I missing something obvious here?

I suspect it is delayed from the previous day
I notice this shows no flight 85 for Feb 24, and this is a daily flight
https://flightaware.com/live/flight/AAL85

Looking at that, this flight seem to have timeliness issues.
Look at Feb 16 - one being a late Feb 15 flight

This is how most airlines will show two flights of the same flight number on the same route where one was delayed from a prior day. The "D" means "delayed"...

I'll throw my professional air traffic control cents in here...

The terminal and enroute computer systems in the U.S. can't process two flights of the same call sign, so the airlines are required to affix an alpha character (or change the flight number) when a situation like that occurs. The "D" doesn't necessarily mean delayed -- some airlines always choose the exact same alpha character when there is a duplicate flight plan.

Best,

Kyle/BOS