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Had this issue with American recently.
Flight from Philly to Buffalo on a Monday morning. First a delay and two gate changes (no big thing). But then we are told they are bringing a plane from the hangar to use. They get us a plane and we are on board and take off.
Right around the time that the pilot usually could come on to tell us that we are about to be landing in Buffalo we are instead told that we are landing in Harrisburg due to a mechanical issue.
That led to a bit of an "oh ****" moment but also brings up the question of why we were up there for that long only to get to Harrisburg. We could have been landing in Buffalo with as long as we were flying.
We land in Buffalo with no issue. No emergency vehicles waiting, no rush to the plane, nothing. This tells me that there wasn't a mechanical emergency as they would have had something prepared for an unscheduled "emergency" landing at a different airport.
When we inquired what the problem was they would not tell us anything. Just a "probably better not to ask" response. If it was "better not to ask" that would mean it was a serious emergency and they would have been prepared for that where we landed.
Our bet is that they took a plane that wasn't cleared for that flight and they could probably hide their mistake by landing in Harrisburg (a 20 some minute flight instead of an hour and 20 something).
We sit in Harrisburg and then get put on a plane and flown back to Philly. Don't even get me started on the "pass them off to another gate" approach of getting people re-booked. First they tell us to see the gate agent where we landed to be re-booked. Then that agent tells us another gate to go to, after the line has grown and 15 minutes passes. We get to that gate and wait and are told another gate to go to. That happens again and we are told to go to customer service, where there is one overwhelmed person working.
Awful customer service, negligence and lies.
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