[cstrdd]

When AA announced that they were cancelling flights for maintenance, I began calling a few days out - and did so every 12 hours - to see if my flights were among those being cancelled during this round. Not unlike routinely calling to check on a departing flight, this time I knew there could be a monkey-wrench in the works. AA suggested checking up on the flights & maintained (maybe bad choice of words) that there was no work scheduled for my flights. So, the cause of the delays? I still have no idea.

Dotting every "I" and crossing every "T" was making my original post extremely long; so, I had to edit some words/sentences out. I travel a lot and I've been through many delays, but AA's handling of all matters in THIS incident was atrocious.

Also, news reports and AA's line was that the cancellations of that week were their decision based on FAA recommendations, not FAA-mandated. If true, why were they unable to re-configure their flights/timetables around the cancellations? Do you mean to tell me that no one at the airline had a clue that they were going to have a PR-nightmare for that upcoming weekend? I would like to think that someone at AA would have a contingency plan that looks ahead more than 2 minutes.

As stated in my original post, I do understand delays can happen; it's the domino-effect of stupid little things after the delays - things which I believe any conscientious business would be trying to avoid - which cause such customer rage.