If you’ve got a flight on a shorter American Airlines (AA) route today, you’d better double check your flight status. America’s largest airline canceled two hundred of it’s flights earlier this morning for safety inspections.
The issue is with the MD-80, a smaller aircraft that has long been a staple in the AA fleet. They’ve canceled many of those flights today to make quick inspections of a particular bundle of wires that company and FAA officials were concerned about. Note that this doesn’t mean that they have grounded the aircraft or that a safety issue has manifested, per se, they just want to run all inspections today so are proactively canceling flights.
Why they suddenly decided to cancel the flights today is another issue altogether that this CNN article doesn’t address. One can only assume that they just learned about the issue, otherwise they wouldn’t be scrambling to nix all of these flights. Did someone see something or was a disaster narrowly avoided? Will we ever find out?
Regardless, make sure that your flights are on time today. If you need help with rebooking, call AA customer support at 1-800-433-7300. And if you do find yourself on an MD-80 today, try not to think about this article.