American Airlines cancelled 850 flights today (9 April) - on top of 460 yesterday - as it conducts additional inspections of its entire MD-80 fleet.
These are the same aircraft ” it has 325 of them ” the carrier grounded just a fortnight ago for maintenance checks, cancelling hundreds of domestic services in the process.
A statement said the additional checks were ”to ensure precise and complete compliance with the Federal Aviation Administration”s (FAA) airworthiness directive related to the bundling of wires in the aircraft”s wheel wells.”
It said they are detailed, technical compliance issues which are not safety-of-flight issues.
”We regret and apologise that we are once again causing inconvenience to our customers, but we will continue to work in good faith until we satisfy all of the technical issues related to this airworthiness directive,” said American Airlines chairman and CEO Gerard Arpey.
A spokesman told ABTN the re-inspections were necessary because there had been a difference of ”interpretation of the specifications” of the directive.
He also said it was too early to say whether there will be further cancellations tomorrow, and no figure on the amount this is costing the airline, but that passengers are being re-accommodated either on other American or competitor airlines” services, or rebooking for free at a later date.
Currently 270 are still out of service, with a team of 97 mechanics working in eight stations across the system to fix the problem.
FAA inspectors have been checking all commercial carriers operating within the States, prompted by Southwest”s recent failure to comply with one such directive ” for which it gave testimony to the US House of Representatives transport committee last week.
Delta grounded 117 MD-88 aircraft two weeks ago for inspections, affecting some 3% of operations.