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American Airlines Plans to Cancels Hundreds of Flights This Summer

By on June 22, 2021 0 461Views

Are you planning to travel this summer? It might be a good idea to check your scheduled flights.

As travel is just starting to ramp up, American Airlines is canceling hundreds of its flights through at least mid-July to relieve tension on operations.

According to Reuters, American Airlines has canceled about 1% of the flights that had been scheduled through mid-July. The company cited a current labor shortage, combined with an increase in demand for travel.

The initial stressor came earlier this month when the company says severe weather at hub airports in Charlotte and Dallas forced delays in several flights. According to experts, weather delays can have long-term impacts on flight crew schedules, as federal laws place limits on how many hours crews can work in specific time periods.

“The bad weather, combined with the labor shortages some of our vendors are contending with and the incredibly quick ramp up of customer demand, has led us to build in additional resilience and certainty to our operation by adjusting a fraction of our scheduled flying through mid-July,” an American Airlines spokesperson said in a statement. “We made targeted changes with the goal of impacting the fewest number of customers by adjusting flights in markets where we have multiple options for re-accommodation.”

The 1% reduction in flights adds up to dozens each day. While a spokesperson confirmed that American canceled 120 flights on Saturday, the airline expects to cancel an additional between 50 and 80 flights between now and July 15.

American says travelers who booked trips through July 15 will be notified or have already received alerts if their flights have been called off so they can make adjustments in advance.

The cancellations will be spread out across American Airlines’ system so that a single area isn’t shouldering the burden. However, there should be a bigger impact in Dallas-Fort Worth, one of the company’s hub.

American Airlines is in the process of re-training pilots who had been furloughed in late 2020 and early 2021 after federal stimulus aid to airlines expired. It has been reported that the training should be completed by the of the month.