Washington, United States | American Airlines has had to cancel nearly a thousand flights since Friday, due to a staff shortage due to disruptions related to bad weather.
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According to FlightAware, which tracks delays and cancellations over US skies, American Airlines canceled more than 800 flights on Friday and Saturday and still expects more than 400 cancellations on Sunday.
The difficulties began Thursday with strong winds that hampered the capacity of the company’s hub in Dallas and delayed employee jobs for future flights, American Airlines CEO David Seymour said in a note to employees on Saturday, reported to AFP.
The head of the company mentions the difficulties in finding pilots and flight crew: “With certain meteorological conditions in addition, we are starting to run out of staff, because crew members find themselves outside their flight schedule.”
He hopes that operations will return “at the beginning of the month” by announcing the return of 1,800 aviation workers who were on standby since the outbreak of the epidemic, and hiring 600 others by the end of December, in addition to 4,000 employees. airports.
Most affected travelers were able to get another reservation on the same day, says the company, which operates 6,700 daily flights around the world to 350 destinations and 50 countries.
American Airlines is not the first airline to suffer a staff shortage since demand for travel has rebounded with vaccinations and the lifting of restrictions.
Last week, Southwest had to cancel more than 2,000 flights, costing it $75 million.
The problems erupted on Friday afternoon due to bad weather and a temporary shortage of air traffic controllers in an area of Florida. But the situation soon worsened due to limited numbers, and due to the snowball effect, it lasted for several days.
