For the second time in as many days, American Airlines has left more than 100,000 passengers stranded.
American Airlines canceled more than 1,000 flights Wednesday, more than one-third of its schedule, as it spent a second straight day inspecting the wiring on some of its jets — the same issue that caused it to scrub hundreds of flights two weeks ago. The nation’s biggest airline had already canceled 460 flights on Tuesday, stranding thousands of travelers. Federal inspectors found problems with wiring work done two weeks ago, although the airline says passenger safety was never jeopardized.
Airline officials said the flights would have averaged more than 100 passengers, meaning that more than 100,000 travelers could have been left scrambling to book new flights.
Tim Wagner, a spokesman for American, said the cancellations could continue beyond Wednesday as the airline works on its fleet of 300 MD-80 jets. By Wednesday morning, only 30 of the planes were back in service.
It hasn’t been clear from the reporting on this how much of these cancellations are the fault of incompetent and/or shady practices on the part of the airline and how much of it is stupidity and inflexibility on the part of the FAA. My hunch is that there’s plenty of blame to go around.
