Apr 10, 2008 12:24 pm US/Eastern
Logan Web Site Failed To Indicate Cancellations
American Airlines Cancels 900 Flights System Wide Thursday
BOSTON (WBZ) ―
Bright and early Thursday morning, the Logan Airport web site may have indicated all was back to normal after Wednesday's mass cancellations by American Airlines, but lines at the airport counter told a different story. Cancellation boards at Logan Airport indicated more than 15 flights canceled locally before 7 a.m.
That was just a small portion of the story, with 900 more American Airlines flights canceled Thursday to fix faulty wiring in hundreds of jets. It marks the third straight day of mass groundings as company executives offered profuse apologies and travel vouchers to calm angry customers.
Customers at Logan Airport Thursday morning said they had no idea of the cancellations until they reached the airport bright and early. There was no indication of a problem on the Massport web site, and the American Airlines phone lines were busy and they could not get through.
The problem with Massport's web site was rectified just after 9 a.m.
"Thank you for bringing the matter to our attention," said Matthew Brelis, director of media relations for Massport.
"The information on the web site regarding flight cancellations comes from the flight information displays within the terminals. If the site was not refreshing, that is a matter we will have to look into."
"As an airport operator we do not cancel flights, airlines do. Passengers should always check with their airline," Brelis said.
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.
That's more than one in three flights canceled over the last three days.
Daniel Garton, an executive vice president of American, said cancellations could extend into Friday.
A return to normal operations depends on how quickly mechanics can inspect and fix the wire bundles. Airline spokesman Tim Wagner said late Wednesday afternoon that 60 planes had been cleared to fly, 119 were being worked on, and 121 planes had not yet been inspected.
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 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 $300 million in the first three months of the year.
American declined to say how much it would spend on $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 $1.15 to $9.17.
American's problem - and Alaska Airlines' cancellation of 14 flights Wednesday to inspect its nine MD-80s - 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. The FAA says improperly bundled wires could rub, leading to an electrical short or even fire.
American officials said the safety of their planes was never jeopardized, and the FAA said no serious incidents have been blamed on poorly bundled wires.
(© 2008 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
