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American’s planes grounded for third day

Passengers wait in line to check in for American Airlines flights at O`Hare Airport on Wednesday in Chicago, Illinois. American Airlines canceled about 850 flights nationwide and nearly 150 at O`Hare so they could re-inspect their MD-80 aircraft. PHOTO: AFP

American Airlines (AA) canceled more than 900 flights yesterday to fix faulty wiring in hundreds of jets, marking the third straight day of mass groundings as company executives offered profuse apologies and travel vouchers to calm angry customers.

American, the nation’s largest carrier, has now scrubbed more than 2,400 flights since Tuesday, when federal regulators warned that nearly half its planes could violate a safety regulation designed to prevent fires.

Daniel Garton, an executive vice president of American, said cancellations could extend into today.

A return to normal operations depends on how quickly mechanics can inspect and fix the wire bundles. Airline spokesman Tim Wagner said late on Wednesday afternoon that 60 planes had been cleared to fly, 119 were being worked on, and 121 planes had not yet been inspected.

The fallout could be seen at airport ticket counters, where frustrated customers bickered with American employees, and on the stock market, where shares of American’s parent company tumbled more than 11 percent on Wednesday.

American estimates that more than 100 passengers would have been on each of those canceled flights.

That means a quarter-million people have been inconvenienced this week.

Airline executives said they thought they had fixed the wiring two weeks ago, when they canceled more than 400 flights to inspect and in some cases fix the shielding around the wires in their MD-80 aircraft.

But this week, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) inspectors, who have been conducting stepped-up surveys of airline compliance with safety rules called airworthiness directives, said 15 of 19 American jets they examined flunked. That left the airline no choice but to ground all 300 of its MD-80s, the most common jet in American’s 655-plane fleet.

“We have obviously failed to complete the airworthiness directive to the precise standards that the FAA requires, and I take full responsibility for that,” Gerard Arpey, American’s chairman and chief executive, said at an industry event in California.

Back at American’s headquarters in Fort Worth, Garton apologized for the snafu and vowed the airline would fix the problem this time.

“We simply cannot put our customers through this again,” he said.

Garton added that for American, “this certainly couldn’t have come at a worse time.”

The airline faces record fuel prices and fear of a recession, and analysts forecast that its parent, AMR Corp, lost more than US$300 million in the first three months of the year.

American declined to say how much it would spend on US$500 travel vouchers and hotel rooms for stranded travelers and overtime for mechanics, or how much revenue it would lose by putting some displaced customers on other airlines.

But Garton said it would be “significant.”

Perhaps worried about that cost, investors on Wednesday sent AMR shares down US$1.15 to US$9.17.

American’s problem stems from an FAA order in 2006 covering the bundling of wires in the backup power system for the fuel pump of the MD-80.

American officials said the safety of their planes was never jeopardized.
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