American Airlines cancels hundreds of flights over the Halloween weekend

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Two days of strong winds in Dallas-Fort Worth, its main hub, greatly reduced its arrival capacity, the company said. Aircraft were also affected in its Charlotte, NC hub

“With extra weather throughout the system, our staff is starting to run tight as crew members end up out of their regular flight sequences,” American said in the statement to CNN.

From kl. 16:00 EDT showed FlightAware, a flight tracking program, 460 flights, or 17% of the airline’s operations, was canceled. A further nearly 300 flights, or 11% of its operations, were delayed.

American also preemptively canceled 284 flights Sunday.

On Friday, FlightAware showed 738, or nearly a quarter, of Americans’ operations were delayed, and it had 342 flight cancellations. It has preemptively canceled 284 flights on Sunday.

American reported that 4,967 flights were scheduled for Saturday.

“To ensure we take care of our customers and provide scheduling security for our crews, we have adjusted our operations for the last few days of this month by proactively canceling some flights,” said American.

Thousands of passengers are traveling over the Halloween weekend right now, many of them tweeting their complaints to the company.

By comparison, Southwest, which has fewer flights a day, has canceled 86 flights and delayed 473.

United vaccine mandate pending for staff seeking medical or religious exemptions
When flights plunged in early 2020, airlines offered buyouts and early retirement packages to employees to reduce costs. As they try to hire or re-employ workers, service interruptions have become more frequent.

American expects more teams to return during the holiday season. The airline said 1,800 stewardesses will return on Monday and the rest will be back by December 1st. The airline said it is also increasing employment in the fourth quarter.

As travel, after all, rises but shuts down during the first days of the Covid-19 pandemic, other airlines have also struggled to return to normal operations. Southwest had an operational meltdown over a weekend in October, canceling more than 2,000 weekend flights.

The company blamed the move on problems with air traffic control and limited staffing in Florida as well as bad weather, saying it was “harder and longer lasting” to get its operations back to normal due to the schedule and staff reductions it introduced during the pandemic.

CNN’s Chris Isidore contributed to this report.

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