AMR's website does not yet have the official news releases up yet. I got a special e-mail this morning, essentially begging me not to give up on AA; it's a pretty squirrelly message:
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Today, we announced a number of changes to our operation in St. Louis. I want to explain what this means to you as a traveler, to thank you for your support and to ask for your future business.
Beginning November 1, 2003, we will reduce our service from St. Louis. Our new emphasis will be on tailoring schedules to you, the local market - as opposed to travelers connecting from elsewhere. We have revised the schedule to provide the best combination of flights to the cities you have historically supported - places such as Boston, New York, Washington D.C. and Los Angeles. You will also see first morning departures and latest evening arrivals for day trips to key business centers. Together, American Airlines(R), American Eagle(R) and AmericanConnection(R) will operate a total of 207 flights daily to 68 cities.
St. Louis remains an extremely important part of our network. It will remain a hub for many of the feeder routes served by AmericanConnection and one of the largest cities in American's system. We are committed to serving the long-term needs of our customers and communities like St. Louis. And we are dedicated to earning your continued support and loyalty.
Please remember these changes do not take effect until November, so any current travel plans you have are intact. We will keep you informed as we move forward.
Sincerely yours,
Dan Garton
Executive Vice President
Marketing
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I suspect that as you are booked on a flight that was originally connecting through STL to somewhere else, they will probably re-route you through O'Hare. (They should still fly out of Springfield; supposedly, the only midwest station they are completely abandoning is South Bend.) They are supposed to send e-mails to or call everyone who has an affected reservation, but if I were you, I'd beat them to it. However, I don't think that they have all of the details of which flights are really going quite nailed down yet; I'd wait a couple of days before calling to find out what your alternatives are.
We mostly gave up on AA some time ago; the STL staff was getting seriously surly, and they were nickel & diming passengers to death. We decided that it just wasn't worth it unless there was no alternative going where we wanted to go. SWA is our preferred carrier, and now, SWA is going to be the largest carrier out of STL.
