American Nixes 1,000 Flights

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American Airlines canceled more than 1,000 flights, or nearly 45 percent of its daily schedule, on Wednesday, stranding thousands of passengers and creating chaos at the busiest U.S. airports as it conducted safety inspections of its MD-80 aircraft, Reuters reports.


The cancellations by the No. 1 U.S. airline, a unit of AMR Corp, follow 460 cancellations on Tuesday and hundreds of cancellations two weeks ago, also for inspections.

An airline spokesman said about 30 MD-80s were in service on Wednesday morning and more were expected to resume flying later in the day.

“We continue to inspect every airplane to ensure we are in total agreement with the specifications of the directive,” AMR Chief Executive Gerard Arpey said in a statement. “We will get back to a full schedule as quickly as possible.”

Shares of AMR fell more than 10 percent early Wednesday afternoon, outpacing losses by other U.S. airline stocks. The Amex airline index was down 4.8 percent.

American said in a statement on Tuesday that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) raised new concerns about recent wiring inspections of the narrowbody MD-80 aircraft that resulted in canceled flights two weeks ago. MD-80s make up nearly half of AMR’s fleet. The average age of the AMR MD-80s is 18 years.

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