Why should you care?

Because this seemed to be the only direct (only 1 flight coupon needed, even though it was 1-stop via ORD) flight from the Northeast to the West Coast that DID NOT count as a transcon in the OWE rules. PVD is not in the "list" of cities in that rule. Flight discontinued effective sometime in the next few days.

My partner was ticketed on this flight on segment #19/20 on a OWE fare either today or tomorow, and wanted to postpone it until August. Fortunately, the AA RTW desk came through, and got an exception, and is allowing him to fly PVD-ORD-LAX, which of course requires a reticketing with an extra (i.e., 21st) segment. No charge of course, since it was their fault that they changed their schedules around. I just have to hope when he goes to reticket it at the CTO, they don't give him a hard time...

He had been prepared to reroute (with a waived reticketing fee) on a direct BOS-SLC flight and then purchase SLC-LAX for about $100 on DL, but AA did the right thing here from a customer service standpoint.

Another one bites the dust I guess

At least you had the segment dated and were thus protected!! I fear my Feb 06 segment east to LAX may go the same way as your PVD-LAX.

All that is tempered nicely (for the moment) by ready availability of transcons for $175 or so, hardly more than the coach-class extra-segment fee and it doesn't come out of the 20-segment limit.

Not in the front of the plane, unless of course you're on Song or JetBlue!

In case anyone cares, the AA CTO did not give ANY problem in re-ticketing this itenerary (which will end up with 21 segments total) at no cost. I guess the RTW desk properly documented the exception and all.

In my experience rerouting of OWEs due to equipment change need not even be documented by the RTW desk. The AA computer changes your route automatically, and if you are not happy with what they give you all you have to do is call reservations (no need for the RTW desk here) and request another date/time, or even route, even if it falls outside OWE rules. AA has been great to me in this respect.

I don't agree with your comments in bold:-

You were ticketed for a flight on (for example) 19 June. You want to change that to 19 August but the route/flight is withdrawn by that date. Why would AA be obliged to reroute you on a different date?

I'm glad it worked out for you but I'm not sure AA had any obligation to do this. It seems that in the interest of customer service they have gone the extra mile.

Because I had a contract with them that they would fly me between PVD and LAX (among other places). That contract had a validity period of 1 year from the date of ticket issuance with no penalty for time/date changes. Since they changed the schedule, they basically can (1) reaccomodate me on alternative flights or (2) refund the ticket, though I'm not sure it's even AA's choice, and I'm not sure how they would go about refunding an in-process OWE ticket. So we pursued option (1). This involved re-issuing the ticket as a connecting flight (2-segments) -- the only way to get from PVD to LAX given the new schedule. Just so happened that this put the ticket over the 20-segment limit, but I don't think there was another way.

I'm glad too, and I think the "interest of customer service" aspect was that they processed this change with no hassle. I would have been prepared to fight, given what I discussed above.