American Airlines cancels more than 1,200 flights this weekend, blaming the weather

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American Airlines canceled more than 900 flights on Friday and Saturday after high winds in north Texas and weather conditions in other parts of the country forced it to sideline planes at key airports.

And the carrier proactively canceled nearly 298 flights for Sunday, more than a tenth of its flights, in an attempt to catch up.

Despite idyllic North Texas weather on Saturday, the Fort Worth-based carrier still had to cancel about 17% of its mid-afternoon schedule, some 461 flights and delay 11% more flights, according to the tracker. airline company Flightaware. .com.

“With additional weather conditions throughout the system, our staff is starting to run out as crew members find themselves out of their regular flight sequences,” a note to American Airlines employees from COO David said. Seymour. “To make sure that we take care of our customers and that we do the planning of our crews, we have adjusted our operations in recent days this month by proactively canceling some flights. “

By mid-afternoon, American had canceled 10% of its flight at its largest hub, DFW International Airport, for a total of 95 flights.

This is a problem that has been repeated too often since airlines began ramping up services in the spring to cater to impatient travelers. Since then, airlines including American, Southwest and Spirit have encountered several difficult weekends, usually a mix of high demand, ambitious schedules and isolated weather conditions.

“We are taking this step to minimize any inconvenience as much as possible,” American’s note said. “Most of the customers impacted by these changes are re-let the same day, and we apologize for having to make these changes.”

Dallas-based Southwest Airlines also suffered a large number of delays on Friday due to rains, winds and low cloud ceilings in the eastern United States. The airline recorded 1,150 delays on Friday, but recorded just 21 cancellations, less than 1% of its flight schedule, according to FlightAware. Southwest still had about 493 delays on Saturday.

@AmericanAir, our flight to Cabo from DFW was canceled mid-flight from CLT. No further flight options until tomorrow. No customer service available. Can pls get credit, hotel or SOMETHING for this inconvenience with less than an hour notice ???

– Buffalo Chicken Pizza (@ ahlef44) October 30, 2021

American said high winds on Thursday forced air traffic controllers to periodically close some runways at DFW International Airport, where strong cross winds were affecting flights.

“This week saw two days of high winds at DFW, with gusts of up to 50 mph on Thursday, creating crosswind limitations that sharply reduced arrival capacity by more than half,” the memo reads. . This weather resulted in a lot of cancellations at DFW as we could only use two runways instead of the usual five.

The cancellations on Friday and Saturday were largely caused by a shortage of pilots and flight attendants, spokesman Dennis Tajer of the Allied Pilots Association, the union of America’s 13,400 pilots, said.

Airlines such as American frequently face pilot shortages in the days following a weather event or other save as crew members are maximizing their hours or having to rest more to comply with federal rules. Pilots and flight attendants, as well as airplanes, are also often at the wrong airport to continue their previously scheduled multi-flight trips, causing a cascade of schedule changes.

American said it was trying to fix the problem by hiring about 4,000 employees by the end of the year.

“The good news for the future is that we continue to recruit staff across all of our operations and will see more of our team return in the coming months,” Seymour’s memo reads. “Specifically, for flight attendants, we have almost 1,800 leave returns starting November 1 – with the rest coming back by December 1 – and we will have over 600 new flight attendants hired on the property. by the end of December. “

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