American Airlines reports fewer flight cancellations, but CLT feels lingering effects
Charlotte Douglas International Airport travelers can breathe easier Tuesday morning, with just a handful of lingering American Airlines flight cancellations expected for the day.
Just four of the scheduled 466 American Airlines flights scheduled to fly out of CLT on Tuesday had been canceled as of 8 a.m., American spokesman Andrew Trull told the Observer in an email.
In total, 97 out of 5,126 scheduled flights across American Airlines system had been canceled as of 8 a.m., Trull said. That makes up just 1.9% of the airlines scheduled flights.
Sunday saw the largest number of flights canceled across American Airlines routes, with more than 1,000 cancellations — or 20.5% of the airline’s total flights. That included 100 flights canceled out of CLT for Sunday, according to American.
And on Monday, there were 28 canceled flights out of a total 645 at the Charlotte airport, the Observer reported.
The Charlotte airport is American Airlines’ second-largest hub. The airline operates the majority of flights out of CLT, which has ranked in the top five busiest airports in the world in number of flights for much of the year, according to flight statistics website Information Design.
Wind and staff shortages
Tuesday — though a big improvement on cancellations — marked the fifth day of nationwide flight cancellations for American Airlines. The airline attributed the mass cancellations to high winds at its Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport hub as well as staffing shortages.
DFW saw wind gusts of up to 50 mph on Thursday, limiting arrival capacity by more than half, American Airlines Chief Operations Officer David Seymour told employees in a letter Saturday.
“Most of the customers impacted by these changes are being rebooked the same day, and we apologize for having to make these changes,” Seymour said in the letter.
Still, Seymour told employees help was on the way, with nearly 1,800 flight attendants returning from leave Monday, and more returning by Dec. 1. And the airline will have more than 600 newly hired flight attendants working by the end of December, he added.
Plus, hiring at airports is underway. The airline expects to add 4,000 new employees in the company’s fourth quarter, Seymour said in the letter.
The airline detailed those hiring plans in an email to customers affected by the cancellations as well.
“We take seriously our commitment to serve you, and it is our responsibility to take learnings from this past weekend and improve upon our processes,” American Airlines told customers in that email.
This story was originally published November 2, 2021 at 10:48 AM with the headline "American Airlines reports fewer flight cancellations, but CLT feels lingering effects."
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