zpaul

Can anyone provide insight into this? I've checked flightaware and flightstats and can't find the reason for the cancellation, but the flight was canceled at 14:18 local time, more than 8 hours prior to departure. I have friends on the flight, and as typical with LATAM they didn't give a reason and didn't provide assistance, so I'm trying to help them out.

I even called AA, knowing that AA isn't the operator of the flight, and the EXP rep was shocked that there is nothing more than "canceled" in the flight history. To me, this means that LATAM is just looking to avoid paying compensation; they didn't provide hotels or meal vouchers last night.

They've been rebooked on LA 1101 today at 10:00am.

Any assistance is appreciated! Thanks!

FortHay

I can not help you with your specific issue, but I can warn you and others that this sort of thing seems to be standard operating procedure at LATAM. To paraphrase deGaulle, 'LATAM is not a serious airline.' I am a regular Brazil traveler and unfortunately LATAM is the country's largest domestic carrier. Last trip in I confirmed the entire itinerary from LAX 48hrs prior as advised, but when I got to GRU I discovered that LATAM had inexplicably cancelled my connection to FOR. Of course, there was no assistance from LATAM and I had to fight their byzantine and nightmarish ground operations in Sao Paolo until I finally got help. I eventually had to cross town with my luggage in a taxi to the old airport and even then had to argue to get my international baggage allowance onto the plane.
This summer I booked through onetravel a similar itinary with AA and LATAM connections, returning next February. Onetravel dutifully notified me last Thursday that LATAM had made a flight change for the return next year. Friday I got on the horn with onetravel and we discovered that the outbound flight from FOR now left 1.5 hours later, leaving me with a 40 minute connection time to the AA flight and they will not wait. I had carefully constructed my trip to have sufficient time at GRU in view of my past experiences, LATAM's poor departure record from FOR, the need to change terminals in Sao Paulo and the long, slow line through the understaffed late night federal police queue. The onetravel agent agreed and we further discovered that LATAM now shows a flight with another number leaving at precisely the same time as the original one! Onetravel agreed to work on getting me onto that flight to preserve my connection time in Sao Paulo. It took 5 days and multiple calls with long phone queues to finally get that. As part of that ordeal, onetravel related to me their multiple contacts with LATAM, as well as AA (the ticket holder), with LATAM repeatedly trying to shirk their responsibility and AA insisting that they can and should do so.
Here is what a professional airline would have done: Go through the passenger list of the delayed flight and identify every passenger with a connection, then manually switching them into the 'new' flight at the original time.
Here is what customers need to do: Avoid booking LATAM flights whenever possible.
Here is what AA and the alliance should do: Consider dropping LATAM!

jlarroulet

Sorry for the very late response.
In general, an operational cancellation executed so much in advance (8 hours) usually means the aircraft scheduled to operate the flight was declared AOG (Aircraft on Ground) upon arrival at Miami due to some technical issue. This is most likely a technical failure that was evaluated to not be able to be resolved on time (for example, requiring parts to be flown from Boeing). When this happens, the flight is cancelled as soon as maintenance informs Latam's flight control center that the aircraft is not going to be released on time, so there's time to activate the notification matrix to advise passengers not to show up at the airport.
Keep in mind that when this happens on an airport far away from your hub (where you may or may not have a backup plane standing by), it's not always easy and fast to prevent impacting the scheduled operation.

This exact situation happened to me years ago (at the time I was a LAN employee) and the final resolution was very similar. As soon as the Miami maintenance crew informed the plane scheduled to be used on my flight (LA503 IIRC) would not be available, a backup plane was repositioned from SCL to MIA and flew us back to SCL on the next day in the morning as a special flight (back in those days, those flights where all numbered either LA11xx or LA13xx, so it appears this is the same case)