This is Why American Airlines Had to Cancel Hundreds of Flights

American Airlines canceled hundreds of flights due to a staffing crunch as well as maintenance and other issues this weekend.

The carrier had said it will trim its schedule by 1% through mid-July but it canceled more than that this weekend.

Roughly 6% of the airline’s mainline schedule, or 190 flights, were canceled Sunday, according to flight tracking site FlightAware.

American Airlines said that equaled about 3% of its total flights, including those operated by regional carriers.

An internal company list viewed by CNBC had revealed that about half of those were because of unavailable flight crews.

On Saturday, about 4% of its mainline schedule, or 123 flights, were canceled and 106 on Monday, according to FlightAware data.

The airline said it’s in the process of hiring hundreds of customer service agents after about a quarter of its customer service agents took voluntary leaves of absence or buyouts.

Delta Air Lines is also in the process of hiring about 1,300 people for these positions, spokesman Morgan Durrant said.

“The bad weather, combined with the labor shortages some of our vendors are contending with and the incredibly quick ramp up of customer demand, has led us to build in additional resilience and certainty to our operation by adjusting a fraction of our scheduled flying through mid-July,” said American Airlines spokeswoman Sarah Jantz in a statement.

“We made targeted changes with the goal of impacting the fewest number of customers by adjusting flights in markets where we have multiple options for re-accommodation.”

Dennis Tajer, spokesman for the Allied Pilots Association, which represents the airline’s thousands of pilots, said the company should offer more overtime in advance to encourage staff to fill in as well as more flexibility in pilots’ schedules to cover staffing shortages.

“They’re trying to put a Band-Aid on something that needs stitches,” said Tajer.

As people start returning to the skies after the COVID-19 ravaged the airline industry for the last year, the Transportation Security Administration said it screened more than 2.1 million people on Sunday.

This was the most since March 7, 2020, but 23% below the 2.7 million people screened two years ago, months before the Covid-19 pandemic began.

Disclaimer: We have no position in any of the companies mentioned and have not been compensated for this article.