American Airlines MD80 Cancellation: What happened?

As pointed earlier FAA could have let the Airlines perform the MD80 wiring inspections without grounding any planes. But seems there was a discord between FAA’s regional and Washington DC office, where the former would have allowed AA to fly the schedule, while the DC office said “No”. So, let me understand this, there was [...]

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American Airlines Update: Back to Full Schedule

Midday, Saturday April 12th 2008 American Airlines has only 3 MD-80s were awaiting final approval from the Federal Aviation Administration. Gerard Arpey, AMR’s and American Airline’s Chief Executive, personally apologized the week of chaos and cancellations.
It seems like FAA’s congressional hearing has caused them to pull the strings around airlines and they [...]

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Friday Update for American Airlines: 595 Flights canceled

Travel woes continued for American Airlines passengers with the airline canceling 595 flights (or 25% of it’s schedule) today (Friday April 11th 2008).
Please make sure that your flight is not canceled before you leave for the airport! Call 800-433-7300 (AA’s standard reservation phone number).

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American Airlines MD 80 Update: Mechanics defend MD-80 Safety

Found here.
From TWU international vice president Dennis Burchette on Grounding of Flights at American Airlines:
I have spent 22 years as a mechanic and quality assurance
inspector at American Airlines and I want to say unequivocally that our
MD-80s are safe. This is more a compliance issue than a safety
question.

Let’s be clear — once the wiring harness was [...]

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American Airlines Third Day Update: 900+ Cancelations Expected

(Pictures from here – Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport on Wednesday April 9th 2008)
American Airlines has announced that it will cancel 900 more flights today (Thursday, April 10th 2008) for continued MD 80 inspections for the wiring inspections. These cancellations will total to 1,550 already canceled this week. The inspections are supposed to have affected 171,000+ [...]

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AA’s MD 80 Update – More than 1000 Flights Cancelled

(Picture form here, showing the real problem)
Today (Wednesday, April 9th 2008), more than 1000 flights were canceled by American Airlines for continued MD-80 Inspections. The 1000+ cancellations were because as of today morning only some 30 of the 336 MD-80s were back in service. Even if on an average there were 100 passengers on these [...]

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Déjà vu? American Airlines cancels hundreds of flights

American Airlines announced that it is canceling as many as 500 flights today (Tuesday, April 8th 2008) to re-inspect (same inspections as done earlier) its MD-80 aircrafts.

Reason as Reported here –
Allied Pilots Association said that – “the Federal
Aviation Administration randomly inspected 10 MD-80s on Monday to make
sure the jets had been properly inspected and [...]

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McDonnell Douglas MD-80

 (Picture taken from – md11forever’s flickr)
Mostly taken from McDonnell Douglas MD-80
MD80 is a twin engine (two rear fuselage-mounted) medium range, single-aisle commercial jet airplanes.

Maiden Flight – 10-25-1979
Introduction – 1980 with Swissair and Austrian Airlines
Primary users – American Airlines, Delta, Alitalia, SAS
Produced – 1979 – 1999
Unit Cost – US$ 41.5 mil to 48.5 mil
Capacity [...]

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AA cancels flights for MD-80 Inspections

First it was Southwest, now American grounding flights due to FAA inspections.
Southwest Airlines only flies Boeing 737s and American’s majority aircrafts are McDonnell Douglas MD-80.
American has already announced that it is going to convert all it’s aging fleet of MD80 to newer fuel efficient Boeing 737s. But this conversion can take a decade or more, [...]

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