What's the story? We have a flight to PHL at 8 am tomorrow. I've gotten two emails in less than 24 hours encouraging me to reschedule my flight. We can't because we have a connecting flight to Bangor.

The same flight that was supposed to go from IAH to PHL this morning at 740 has been delayed over 7 hours (supposed to depart at 3 pm).

If that happens to us tomorrow we will completely miss our flight to BGR and be stuck in PHL.

The plane going to PHL has been at IAH since 11 am yesterday.

Are other AA flights delayed? Is there a staffing issue? I heard this am that FAs might be unofficially striking over a change to the sick time policy.

The United flight to PHL scheduled to depart at 930 am today was also delayed, but only for 2.5 hours, and it's in the air now.

Edit: I may have answered my own question…there is an unofficial strike.

https://www.fodors.com/news/news/flying-american-airlines-there-may-be-delays-at-these-airports-due-to-service-worker-rallies

Edit: The flight yesterday never departed. It wasn't cancelled, and the flight disappeared from flight aware.

AA app said it was rescheduled for its original departure time TODAY (July 2). Got to the airport, and both departures are on the board, except the 740 is now scheduled for 7 am. Our flight is scheduled for 805.

So strange that the flight just dropped off of flight aware. It's not there at all, even now, 10 min before departure.

So, got to the gate and both flights are supposed to leave from the same gate. The plane from yesterday was parked at the gate and boarding.

Out of curiosity, I asked a pilot how can two flights in the same day have the same flight number. He said they can't and AA will have to change the flight number in-air to avoid a fine.

He also said, if our flight was leaving from the same gate, it wouldn't leave on time. We have a really tight connection in PHL, so I spoke to the gate agent and she moved us to the earlier flight. We boarded and the flight is almost empty. The whole series of events happened over about 5 min.

Right after we boarded, the 805 am flight was moved to another gate. Such a strange series of events!

So they let a nearly empty flight leave and then moved what is probably a full flight to the same destination to another gate? Typical.

So, the nearly empty plane had to go. It didn't belong at IAH (had been there since Friday night). If they had cancelled the 805 flight (which was probably full), all those passengers would have had to be rebooked, causing more problems. So basically both planes were in the air to PHL at the same time. We were about 30 min ahead.

What I don't understand is why they didn't ask people on our flight (the 805 departure) to move to the earlier flight. The 805 departed on-time, so we didn't get to PHL that much earlier, but it makes a difference if you have a tight connection. Also, we weren't fighting for space in the overhead bins.

People on the plane with us who were supposed to leave on Saturday said they were told it was a mechanical problem. They also said AA kept delaying and delaying and delaying the flight instead of just cancelling it, which we all know is really frustrating. I suspect a lot of the passengers who were supposed to leave on Saturday either cancelled their flight and/or found a seat on a different airline.

Ultimately, the earlier flight was recorded with a 24 hour delay. I was tracking both flights on Flight Aware, and FA was really confused because both flights had the same number. If anyone had tried to track the flight we were in, FA would have given them info for the flight that left at 805.

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What I don't understand is why they didn't ask people on our flight (the 805 departure) to move to the earlier flight.

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this creates a ton of problems for checked bags

That is true. The gate agent initially said she could not change us for that reason, but we didn't have any checked bags.

AA also started sending me emails on Friday evening asking if I would voluntarily change my flight, but the only option was a flight on Monday (and that was a no). So they could have asked people to change on Saturday, once they knew that plane wasn't going anywhere until Sunday. At that point no one originally booked on the Sunday flight had checked any bags.

Also weird that both flights had (and still have) the same flight number.

Agree. Checked bags is a lame excuse seeing as they new these flights would be departing so close to each other and the first would be empty before anybody checked in. Could have sent an email the night before (first x people can change for free) and asked again when checking bags. "Hey, so you're aware, yesterdays flight was delayed and flying out today. It's pretty empty and likely to cause your flight to be delayed, but you can change flights at no cost."

I'm convinced no airline employees are motivated to do anything that requires one ounce of extra work. If you've purchased a ticket they have your money. No incentive to be helpful, ease crowding, make people more comfortable, or even help alleviate future problems (ie, proactively put people in an earlier flight so they don't risk missing their connection). And it's not just the airlines. Customer service is almost non-existent across industries at this point.

TXTransplant said:

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I'm convinced no airline employees are motivated to do anything that requires one ounce of extra work. If you've purchased a ticket they have your money. No incentive to be helpful, ease crowding, make people more comfortable, or even help alleviate future problems (ie, proactively put people in an earlier flight so they don't risk missing their connection). And it's not just the airlines. Customer service is almost non-existent across industries at this point.

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Or they're trying to avoid adding complexity to a system that is already stretched thin. Sometimes the juice isn't worth the squeeze and not worth the possibility of errors and unreasonable customers.

I find Delta to have far fewer issues than any other US carrier. ATL, their home airport, is also incredibly well run.