I had a similar experience last week, with United. We try to stay away from AA and rarely get decent prices out of GRR, but found good prices 4 months ago for January 2-14 through Newark. The better 1/2 was hearing stories about flight changes and checked our status, only to discover that United scrapped our flight from Grand Rapids to Newark, and no notification. When I called to fix this mess they wanted to put me on a late afternoon flight to Newark and did not offer to change our late morning flight to SXM! We ended up leaving New Years afternoon to stay overnight and kept the same 2nd leg. Cost us a night's hotel stay, but we did not have to change room and car reservations and I did not lose a day of our SXM vacation. Don't trust any airlines.