American Airlines Canceling Hundreds Of Flights This Weekend

Looking at published data, American is approaching 500 flight cancelations over the course of a four day period around this weekend:

• On Friday, June 18, 2021, American canceled 83 flights
• On Saturday, June 19, 2021, American canceled 123 flights
• On Sunday, June 20, 2021, American canceled 167 flights
• On Monday, June 21, 2021, American canceled 97 flights

I would expect the number of cancelations to continue to grow significantly for both today and tomorrow, given the domino effect of flight cancelations, and just how complicated airline scheduling is.

With these numbers of cancelations, it’s not a good weekend to have a ticket booked on American Airlines. The phone hold times to speak to a reservations agent are many hours, and I’ve heard of some very long lines at American Airlines customer service desks at airports.

There are two different reasons being given for flight cancelations, including “flight crew unavailable” and “operational decisions.” That suggests that these cancelations are likely related to American not having enough staff. And then for cancelations due to “operational decisions,” presumably that’s for situations where American prioritized one flight over another (which happens due to a variety of factors).

The cancelations seem to primarily be focused on the Boeing 737 fleet, which suggests that the crewing issues are related to pilots rather than flight attendants (since pilots are rated on a specific type of aircraft, while flight attendants are generally trained on all mainline aircraft).

Read more at One Mile At A Time.

{Matzav.com}