The US's biggest airline has cancelled 900 more flights after safety concerns forced it to ground 300 planes - nearly half its passenger-carrying fleet.
It is the third day of cancellations by American Airlines. Nearly 2,500 flights have been affected, causing delays for 100,000 passengers.
The action follows an inspectors' warning of problems with wiring repairs on the MD-80 aircraft two weeks ago.
Other major US carriers have also been forced to ground planes for inspection.
Alaska Airlines has cancelled more than 40 flights, and Midwest Airlines 10, to inspect their own MD-80 jets.
Delta Air Lines, which operates 117 of the twin-engined craft, was likely to call off "a handful of flights", the Associated Press reported the airline as saying.
Full responsibility
American Airlines has said the cancellations are likely to continue until Saturday.
| | It's my fault and I take full responsibility Gerard Arpey Chief executive |
Chief Executive Gerard Arpey apologised profusely for the inconvenience to passengers.
"We are doing everything we possibly can to reaccommodate our customers," he said.
"It's my fault and I take full responsibility."
Mr Arpey added that the cancellations would cost the airline "in the tens of millions of dollars".
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has been tightening up its inspections since it was discovered last year that fuselage cracks on Southwest planes had gone undetected because of missed inspections.
The FAA said it had checked several American MD-80s a fortnight ago and decided that improvement work carried out did not meet its standards.
From BBC.co.uk
This is a great example of the one of the key problems with too little regulation of industry. The extent to which major US carriers ignored the airworthiness directive, stonewalled investigators, and even bullied FAA directors to curtail investigations (and even issued threats against investigators that pushed the issue) is ridiculous and frightening. To hear the airlines tell it, they weren't quite following each and every precise, specific, and minute safety check...but it was really no big deal. As someone who flies quite a lot, I find this really, really disturbing. We trust that the FAA issues specific regulations for the safety of the millions of passengers that fly each year, and that the airlines comply in part because it's the law and in part because if failure to do so results in a crash they suffer a drastic drop in passengers--this would the market "righting" itself. But apparently they have disregarded the law and are willing to gamble on safety. I am amazed that airlines get away with what they do. In all honesty, most should have been dismantled and sold repeatedly (but oh right, they always get bailed out and then their CEOs still get massive bonuses). Yeah market! Good job on the housing and mortgage thing too. God forbid that there be any regulation. Let the market work itself out...even if means unsafe aircraft and the collapse of a major sector of the US economy.
