I was checking our January Aruba flights, and saw that AA changed our return flight out of Aruba from 5:40 PM to 3:30 PM - which in itself would have been good. But then I noticed that they had us staying overnight in Charlotte and not flying home to ILM until the next day - ridiculous (the original flight that we had booked back in Sept got us home the same evening).

I looked at the current AA schedule for the day we were supposed to return home at the end of January, and almost all flights now have an overnight connection. They have a couple of flights leaving Aruba early in the morning, with changes at 2 airports, and getting home late at night - not an option we'd be interested in, so we cancelled the entire trip and got a full refund from AA.

That's odd. I wonder why they did that? Aruba had no damage from the hurricanes, so the tourists there should be MORE, rather than less.

Yes, our exact thoughts.

We just returned from 2 weeks at the Divi Phoenix in Aruba, and we met some SXM regulars there who, like us, had to change travel plans after the hurricane. Our friends who timeshare at Divi Phoenix said that Divi Phoenix is giving high season preference to Divi SXM people, which is probably why we couldn't get a reservation there in January.

I'm sure that many others like us who lost timeshares in SXM are looking at Aruba as an alternative for the forseeable future. So you would think that the airlines would respond accordingly, instead of changing high season schedules to these absurd flights / connections.

Yes, I would think Aruba and then possibly Mexico, would be the #1 go-to places for timeshare folks. Weird..