American Airlines Cancels Hundreds of Flights Due to Weather, Staffing Shortages

[TexasTowelie]

Source: NBC-DFW

American Airlines canceled hundreds of flights over Halloween weekend, with high concentrations of flight disruptions at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

According to the flight-tracking website FlightAware, the airline canceled 463 flights, or 18% of its mainline operation, on Saturday. An additional 291 flights were delayed.

American Airlines canceled 342 flights on Friday and 737 were delayed.

As of Saturday afternoon, an additional 287 flights were canceled for Sunday.

Read more: https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/american-airlines-cancels-hundreds-of-flights-due-to-weather-staffing-shortages/2794043/

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Windy conditions in the DFW Metroplex are forcing flight cancellations.

[BlueIdaho]

1. Texas you say...

That sucking sound you hear is the state of Texas intentionally dragging the US economy down the drain.

[Polybius]

3. Reminds me of this:

[Socal31]

2. Airlines tend to blame weather or other "acts of nature/god".

The compensation and other penalties faced by the airlines are much different if it is a natural phenomena such as weather.

Unless other airlines using the same routes are cancelling similar numbers of flights, I'm guessing it is mostly the 2nd reason they list.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

4. I was an airline ticket agent for ten years, many decades ago.

Despite the popular misconceptions, we did not lie about why flights were delayed or cancelled.

As for delays, literally every single minute of a delay had to be assigned blame: ground traffic, luggage or freight boarding, weather, air traffic, and so on. I took great pride in the fact that in my ten years once and only once did a flight take a ticket counter delay, and I'll spare you the details, mainly because it takes longer to describe than the time it took to happen. I'll just say I was working alone, trying to get two flights out which left ten minutes apart, there was a maintenance issue on an inbound flight and I had to reroute all the passengers on the outbound flight, make up an interrupted trip manifest, make sure that LaGuardia knew about the incoming passengers, both flights were nearly full, and oh, dear lord it was my worst day ever.

One time, because of severe weather in northern New York State, where my airline mainly flew, they cancelled every single flight system wide, even though other airlines were flying into and out of many of those same cities. The airline made what was an appropriate decision for them, even though none of the other airlines flying into some of those same cities made the same decision. Route structure matters.

[DFW]

7. I had an experience to the contrary

We had flown in to Atlanta from Paris on Delta, connecting to Charleston, SC. We were told our flight to Charleston was canceled due to bad weather, and so was the next flight. Our daughter was flying in to meet us from Washington, and she called us from Charleston when she landed. There was a third flight, but it was "fully booked." I took a supervisor aside, told her I was platinum-for-life, and my daughter had just landed in glorious weather in Charleston, so cut the "bad weather" crap and tell us what was going on. She admitted that they had mechanical trouble with a few planes. I said, look, we have been on the road for nearly 20 hours from Germany to France to Atlanta, were dead tired, and despite our first class tickets to Charelston (included in our fare from Europe), we would be happy to sit in coach for the 35 minute flight if they would only get us on it--AND I wouldn't raise a stink with the higher ups. Seats were found for us. What a miracle.

[Igel]

6. If you're awake and click quickly,

check out https://w1.weather.gov/data/obhistory/KDAL.html.

It's a running "last 3 days" and shows that winds on 10/30 at various times went over 30 mph sustained with gusts over 50 mph.

30 mph is pretty bad for taking off and landing. 50 mph? Hardly better.


Let's just say that in this case the NOAA stands behind the company. QED.

It would be good to have a weather versus staffing breakdown, but it's not like we have a right to know.

[TheRickles]

5. Could it be the same situation as with Southwest a few days ago?

Massive walkouts over vaccine refusal, with weather being the cover story. As per this earlier DU post: https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142818381|

[Alexander Of Assyria]

8. Stop the presses! Weather cancels aircraft flights!!

[mnhtnbb]

9. My son got caught in the American Airlines mess in Charlotte, NC on Friday

Last edited Sun Oct 31, 2021, 10:36 AM - Edit history (2)

His direct flight to San Diego from Charlotte was canceled one hour before take-off when the plane--originating from Kansas City--was canceled just when it was due to take off. No weather involved at either location.

According to Flight Aware stats, the Charlotte airport (which is also an AA hub) on Friday had more delays/cancellations than only three other airports in the WORLD, and Dallas/Forth Worth was one of them. American Airlines on Friday had more delays/cancellations than any other airline in the WORLD.

He said there were hundreds of people in line with him waiting to get to Customer Service. It took four hours for him to reach an agent and the best they could offer was standby on the Saturday morning flight. He declined, figuring the same thing could happen because it appeared most of this was a staffing issue, and instead flew back to Raleigh that night. He ended up having to Zoom into the conference he was supposed to attend as a presenter on a panel. He also said that a lot of other people missed getting to the conference because of AA cancellations.

Beyond flying American on a trip I already have booked in January, I won't fly them again until they get these staffing issues worked out. BS on weather. One of their regional airlines--Piedmont, I think--has voted to go on strike against them.

https://www.businessinsider.com/piedmont-flight-attendants-vote-100-strike-over-low-living-wages-2021-10

The pilots have already had protests going on against American, with an action in Miami recently. American has become a discount/cut rate airline more in line with Spirit or Frontier than a main line carrier like Delta or United. They also changed their policy recently to only be responsible for refunding flight credit, rather than getting you on the next flight out with space and the class you booked as the main carriers do.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/07/american-airlines-pilots-union-plan-airport-pickets-as-labor-tension-rises.html

And here's Saturday's weather at DFW from the Flight Aware site. It doesn't look like wind was a problem.

https://flightaware.com/resources/airport/KDFW/weather


On edit: looking at cancelled departures for Sunday at DFW, it's all American Airlines. The weather excuse is TOTAL BS. Other airlines that fly out of DFW like Spirit, Frontier, Delta, Envoy, Mesa...didn't have massive cancellations from DFW yesterday nor are they showing up today. Do they just have better pilots that know how to take off in those dangerous 5 knot winds?

https://flightaware.com/live/airport/KDFW/cancelled_origin/airline?;offset=40;order=filed_departuretime;sort=DESC

[George II]

10. That's horrible for those stranded. "Been there, done that!" I'm sure the entire country...

...from coast to coast to coast was messed up with rippling delays.