enpremiere

Depending on your travel date, even after making a change to desired flight(s) keep in mind that American's scheduling can see changes several times before the date of travel. Since re-ticketing is based on travel date and other factors, it does fall on the traveler to be proactive.

As grandpappy EnPremiere might have said, "tend to your garden of reservations to avoid unpleasant surprises."

travelmad478

Actually I decided right after I wrote that post that the 44-minute connection was making me too anxious (plus I didn’t like that my new flight got me in 90 minutes later, for a weekend trip). So I called and got it changed to a 90-minute connection and an earlier arrival. Shockingly, not only was my hold time less than 2 minutes, I also got the change made with no pushback at all. Yay!

Herb687

You check ALL your reservations AT LEAST twice a day?

fdog

^ Not me, that's what EF alerts are for!

All the best, James

LETTERBOY

Yep. It only takes me about a minute (tops) per reservation. Now, I will admit that I don't travel as much as some people here, so doing this may be more of a PITA for someone who flies once a week. But I've found that doing this saves me nasty surprises.

formeraa

Airlines, in general, have never been very good at notifying people of schedule changes. Forty years ago, the similar complaint was they changed my flight, did not call me, and I got to the airport and there was no flight. I check my reservations weekly to see if there are any changes.

writerguyfl

While I never worked for an airline, I did work for a full-service travel agency that sold airline tickets. One of my good friends worked in our Airline Department. Those folks were the experts when it came to everything airline-related.

As dls25 notes, schedule changes get placed in a queue. Everyone affected by a specific flight change will get notified at the same time. But, those notifications do not necessarily happen at the same time as the flight change. Rather, it's done in batched in reverse chronological order (soonest flights first).

Airlines use this system to avoid swamping their websites and call centers.

I completely understand why a customer might not like the way they system is configured. But, from a business perspective, it's a necessary to manage their resources (call center labor, computer processing ability) this way to avoid chaos every time a large schedule change happens.

johnasmith

Thanks everyone. It looks like I will be cancelling and rebooking a different itinerary. Everything was booked with AAdvantage miles which should get re-instated, if I understand the new program. I did pay $150 for an upgrade on the return flight, which I just found out they also changed, hopefully that will get refunded.

writerguyfl

I also had the same nonstop LAX-FLL flight get changed to the connection. Can't remember if I called or used Twitter, but getting a complete refund for everything was easy. You shouldn't have any problems.

bl-ord

AA has changed mine numerous times over the years without notice. Occasionally get an email. Over the Pond travel is more common to get notice in my experience. Maybe EU regulations have something to do with it. Mainland to Hawaii changes without notice also common.

freebee

Booked a nonstop JFK-LAS flight for February and AA didn't bother to notify me that it was changed to a one-stop flight. Having not flown American in years, I'm wondering if this was a glitch or is it now Standard Operating Procedure to not inform passengers of scheduled flight changes until much closer to the departure date, if at all. I waited about ten days after noticing the change in my account to cancel the flight and try my luck with Delta.

Antarius

Hit or miss. I either get 3 emails and 2 push notifications or absolutely nothing.

eefor jfp

I've always been notified (sometimes multiple times for multiple changes) but I don't fly AA that often. My guess is that sometimes things fall through the cracks. In other threads one suggestion has been to make sure you've added AA to your list of email contacts to avoid having these messages sent to your spam folder.

asnovici

My experience is almost never any notification at all thats why self monitoring your bookings is essential.

USFlyerUS

I have noticed that if you accept the changes in the mobile app or online, then I don't get an email. I'm guessing that removes a flag that the email job uses. I've always been notified when I haven't already noticed the schedule change myself.