Our flight from our home airport on AA coming up in October was also done the same way. We had booked the early flight out of GSP, connecting through CLT and they changed us to a flight with very little connection time to SXM. I feel much better if we get to CLT and have time to breathe a minute and eat breakfast in CLT than having to worry about any delays causing us to miss our flight out of CLT. I booked the trip in May, but I was checking the flight in July and saw that they had changed it. I finally got an automated phone alert last week from AA saying they had changed the flight. They left me a number to call if I had issues with the change. I called and got it changed back to an earlier flight. Hopefully they won't change it again between now and mid October.