| Juicy D. Links |
04-08-2008 04:45 PM |
American Airlines canceled as many as 500 hundred flights Tuesday with more cancellations likely Wednesday to conduct more inspections of its MD-80 planes and the bundling of wires in the aircraft's wheel wells, the company said Tuesday.
A spokesman for Lambert-St. Louis International Airport did say some American flights scheduled for departure from Lambert were canceled Tuesday, but he could not provide an exact figure. An American Airlines spokesman was not available for comment. The airline has approximately 152 daily departures from Lambert.
The inspections, which are related to detailed, technical compliance issues and not related to safety-of-flight issues, are to ensure compliance with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), according to American Airlines.
"We've been working in good faith to ensure that we are in complete compliance with this airworthiness directive," Gerard Arpey, chairman and CEO of American Airlines, said in a statement. "We regret and apologize that we are once again causing inconvenience to our customers, but we will continue to work in good faith until we satisfy all of the technical issues related to this airworthiness directive."
The FAA raised additional concerns regarding the manner in which American followed the engineering change order that had been written for the airworthiness directive related to the wiring in the MD-80s wheel wells, American said.
American said any aircraft that does not comply with the technical specifications of installation will be removed from service until all specifications have been met.
The company said it did not know how many cancellations would result, but it could reach as many as 500 on Tuesday.
American Airlines is a unit of Fort Worth, Texas-based AMR Corp. (NYSE: AMR).
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