| American Airlines Inc. canceled 540 more flights planned for Friday informs AP. In total, more than 3000 flights from this airline were canceled for the last few days. The change in flight schedules of American Airlines has disturbed no less than 300 thousand passengers.
American Airlines was compelled to temporarily suspend operations of several planes from its air fleet. Medium range planes MD-80, used by the airline for internal flights, are being checked for defects in wiring.
As of Thursday, American Airlines Inc has completed checking 179 out of a total 300 MD-8's which are being used by the airline. The condition of 60 airliners is recognized to be fully in conformity with the safety norms and 119 airliners were sent for additional inspection.
Two weeks ago, federal bodies of the USA for air traffic safety have expressed, for the first time, concern about the inspection, which identified defects in the wiring system of aircraft manufactured by company Macdonnell Douglas.
"We continue the full-scale inspection of all planes, so that the planes fully conform to our requirements of the guidelines stated the Chairman and CEO Mr. Gerard Arpey. We hope to return to a normal flight schedule as early as possible" he added.
On Wednesday morning, only 30 were allowed to fly out of 300 aircraft which are to undergo additional checks.
Southwest, Delta and United Inc. are also carrying out the inspection of planes.
The Transport Committee of the House of Representatives of Congress of the USA established that cracks in the fuselage of some planes belonging to Southwest Inc. remained unnoticed for a long time since the inspections were not carried out according to the schedule.
On Thursday, the next round of hearings will take place in the senate with regard to inspections and the maintenance of aircraft.
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American Airlines canceled 570 more flights this Friday, bringing its total number of this week's canceled flights to 3,000, and the total number of bumped passengers to over 250,000. The company said it expects to cancel more flights on Saturday and possibly next week. Many fed-up travelers headed for trains and said that it's the worst management they have seen from an airline company in their lifetime. One bumped AA passenger said that it's not a coincidence that AA also stands for "Alcoholics Anonymous".
