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American cancels 900 flights
Thursday

By DAVID KOENIG AP Business
Writer

Article Launched: 04/09/2008
11:18:22 PM PDT

Click photo to enlarge

Passengers
wait in line at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago,
Wednesday, April 9, 2008. American Airlines canceled 850
flights Wednesday, more than one-third of its schedule, as it
spent a second straight day inspecting the wiring on some of
its jets.

«

1

»

DALLAS—American
Airlines canceled more than 900 flights Thursday to fix faulty
wiring in hundreds of jets, marking the third straight day of
mass groundings as company executives offered profuse
apologies and travel vouchers to calm angry customers.

Other carriers operating similar aircraft also left
passengers scrambling for alternatives as they too canceled
flights to inspect the wire bundles at the heart of a renewed
safety crackdown by the Federal Aviation Administration.

Alaska Airlines canceled 11 more flights early Thursday as
it continued to inspect its nine MD-80 jets. Spokeswoman
Caroline Boren in Seattle said Thursday's cancellations follow
28 Wednesday and three on Tuesday. The airline was working to
accommodate all affected passengers, she said.

Midwest Airlines canceled at least 10 flights Thursday
after it grounded all of its 13 MD-80 planes to inspect the
same issue affecting American's aircraft. Midwest spokesman
Mike Brophy said federal regulators cleared the planes to fly,
but executives at the airline decided the aircraft should be
re-inspected by Midwest personnel.

Delta Air Lines was likely to cancel "a handful of flights"
Thursday, but was expecting "minimal cancellations and minimal
customer impact," spokeswoman Betsy Talton said. The carrier
operates 117 MD-80 series planes.

The problems could be just beginning. The latest checks are
part of a second phase of audits being carried out by the FAA,
which came under

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pressure from lawmakers after its inspectors were found
to be too tax with Southwest Airlines Co. last year. That
round of inspections runs through June 30.

American, the nation's largest carrier, has now scrubbed
more than 2,400 flights since Tuesday, when federal regulators
warned that nearly half its planes could violate a safety
regulation designed to prevent fires.

That's more than one in three flights canceled over the
last three days.

Daniel Garton, an executive vice president of American,
said cancellations could extend into Friday.

A return to normal operations depends on how quickly
mechanics can inspect and fix the wire bundles.

Airline spokesman Tim Wagner said Thursday that about 80
planes had been cleared to fly. Work had been completed on
another 17 or 18 planes, but FAA inspectors had not yet signed
off on those. The rest of American's 300 MD-80s were in
various stages of inspections, Wagner said.

The fallout could be seen at airport ticket counters, where
frustrated customers bickered with American employees, and on
the stock market, where shares of American's parent company
tumbled more than 11 percent Wednesday.

American estimates that more than 100 passengers would have
been on each of those canceled flights. That means a
quarter-million people have been inconvenienced this week.

Airline executives said they thought they had fixed the
wiring two weeks ago, when they canceled more than 400 flights
to inspect and in some cases fix the shielding around the
wires in their MD-80 aircraft.

But this week, Federal Aviation Administration inspectors,
who have been conducting stepped-up surveys of airline
compliance with safety rules called airworthiness directives,
said 15 of 19 American jets they examined flunked. That left
the airline no choice but to ground all 300 of its MD-80s, the
most common jet in American's 655-plane fleet.

"We have obviously failed to complete the airworthiness
directive to the precise standards that the FAA requires, and
I take full responsibility for that," Gerard Arpey, American's
chairman and chief executive, said at an industry event in
California.

Back at American's headquarters in Fort Worth, Garton
apologized for the snafu and vowed the airline would fix the
problem this time.

"We simply cannot put our customers through this again," he
said.

Garton added that for American, "this certainly couldn't
have come at a worse time." The airline faces record fuel
prices and fear of a recession, and analysts forecast that its
parent, AMR Corp., lost more than $300 million in the first
three months of the year.

American declined to say how much it would spend on $500
travel vouchers and hotel rooms for stranded travelers and
overtime for mechanics, or how much revenue it would lose by
putting some displaced customers on other airlines. But Garton
said it would be "significant."

Perhaps worried about that cost, investors on Wednesday
sent AMR shares down $1.15 to $9.17.

American's problem—and Alaska Airlines' cancellation of 14
flights Wednesday to inspect its nine MD-80s—stems from an FAA
order in 2006 covering the bundling of wires in the backup
power system for the fuel pump of the MD-80. The FAA says
improperly bundled wires could rub, leading to an electrical
short or even fire.

American officials said the safety of their planes was
never jeopardized, and the FAA said no serious incidents have
been blamed on poorly bundled wires.

Some passengers took a jaundiced view toward American's
promise to fix the problems.

Kathy Neer of Santa Fe, N.M., was caught up in both waves
of cancellations to and from a vacation in Paris. She and her
husband were stranded in Dallas on Tuesday on the final leg of
their journey home. American gave the Neers a voucher for a
hotel room and seats on another flight home Wednesday.

"They say our flight is leaving at 3:55 p.m., but do you
think we trust them?" Neer said. "After being burned twice,
we're a little skeptical."

———

AP Business Writer Adam Schreck in New York, and Associated
Press writers Daisy Nguyen in Los Angeles and Jeff Carlton in
Dallas contributed to this report.

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