More American Airlines flights cancelled for more MD-80 inspections

by Grant Martin on

Over two thousand flights are being canceled over the next few days on American Airlines for more maintenance checks.

The nation’s largest carrier continues to have problems with their MD-80 fleet. The issue this time is similar to what happened a few weeks back — wiring along the wing hasn’t been inspected properly and needs to be checked. For some reason, inspections weren’t up to snuff last week though, which is why the carrier is grounding much of their fleet again.

American expects to finish the inspections shortly, but at the time of writing most of their MD-80 fleet (and their respective passengers) are still on the ground. Keep an eye on your itinerary if one of these aircraft is involved in the next few days.

More flights canceled as the MD-80 goes in for inspection

by Grant Martin on

Yesterday, the FAA raised some concerns about the maintenance and operations of the Mcdonell-Douglas 80 aircraft and American Airlines, their largest US customer was forced to cancel nearly 320 (up from the original 200 they had reported) flights for immediate inspections. Their thought was that they would be finished with analysis by the end of the day and back to normal operations soon, but it now appears that the issue is more widespread than originally thought.

American is still hunting down MD-80’s today, with another 132 flights canceled, while Delta Airlines has suddenly acknowledged the problem and is starting inspections of their own aviary; they expect to cancel just over three hundred flights as well.

One is forced to wonder if the root cause of the problem is now in the inspection procedures of the airlines or in the aircraft itself. Are wiring bundles aging prematurely and failing on all MD-80 aircraft? It will be interesting to see if other airlines start to follow suit and take their own MD-80’s out of commission. Midwest and several other airlines globally run the same aircraft — will they make the same cancellations?

In the mean time, keep an eye on your short-haul flights over the next couple of days to make sure your schedule hasn’t been messed with. This problem could definitely ripple outward for a few days.

BREAKING: American Airlines cancels 200 flights today for safety inspections

by Grant Martin on

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.

Southwest grounds 41 Jets for “Safety related” issues.

by Grant Martin on

Remember the hubbub last week about Southwest Airlines purportedly flying airplanes sans proper safety inspections? Well the problem wasn’t as bad as most media outlets (and politicians) made it sound, but most people agree that there was a bit of an oversight in the testing methods.

Once the airline routed out the bad apples (three employees were put on leave) and hired outside consultants to review their safety measures, they started going back to their maintenance records and inspecting their planes. In the course of their investigation, they determined that 44 of their 188 aircraft needed to be analyzed, five of which were already out for maintenance and one of which was already retired.

Before you flip out, Congressman Oberstar, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the 38 in the skies were going to burst into flames somewhere over Oklahoma, just that a small section of fuselage skin hadn’t recently been checked for flaws. None of the aircraft so far have been found unfit to fly, and Southwest expects to have all aircraft operational by tonight. Until then, you can expect a few flights to be out of schedule, but by the time you read this the inspections will probably already be done.

You can read an article, complete with incorrect data from CBS11 TV, or check out the Newswire post below.

Stranger walks five year old girl off flight

by Grant Martin on

I’m not sure if I would let my five year old daughter on a plane all by herself, but if I was forced to, I would make sure that the airline was keeping a sharp eye on the tot for the entire flight. That’s what a couple in Canada assumed when they purchased a special “Unaccompanied Minor” ticket on Westjet for their daughter.

Instead, the CBC reports that child was all but ignored. Instead, the friendly stranger sitting in the adjacent seat took it up on himself to take care of her, playing games on the plane and eventually escorting her out of security. Apparently they waited around for a Westjet representative to escort the girl out and after nobody came he took it upon himself.

The good thing about the whole debacle is that the stranger was just a normal nice person walking a little girl off an airplane. It’s a good thing that this guy was around and some nutcase didn’t pick her up at the airport.

Now the parents are furious that the airline didn’t do anything to take better care of their child. In the true (North) American fashion, they plan to sue.