American Airlines Cancels Hundreds Of Flights, Leaving Plenty Of South Florida Travelers Stranded
MIAMI (CBSMiami) – Thousands are stranded after a weekend full of flight cancellations.
"It's been chaos. My flight got delayed twice and it got canceled twice," said Pablo Morales.
He's among the thousands of American Airlines customers dealing with the impacts of yet another flight fiasco.
"American Airlines has really done a number on us this weekend, canceling a lot of flights. Almost every flight that we saw that was flying out international was canceled – Mexico City, Honduras, Costa Rica, several places," added Morales
Hector Arteaga was one of those international travelers.
"We're basically coming from New York all the way to Ecuador and when we got to Miami, when we arrived, we got a message that we got canceled," said Arteaga, who added his flight was canceled not once but twice.
According to flightaware.com, the airline canceled 874 flights countrywide on Sunday.
Miami International Airpirt had 88 of those cancellations.
Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport had just about nine flights canceled, but they had 49 delays. And for many customers CBS4 spoke to say those delays also resulted in missed flights.
"This is awful. I've been traveling my entire life and this is the worst experience I've ever had to be quite honest it's awful," said Adrian Martin.
Martin said because they missed their connection they will have to drive to Fort Myers and hope to get on another flight Monday.
In a statement from American Airlines, the COO said, "The cancellation were the result of severe winds and staffing being run tight as crewmembers ended up outside of their regular flight sequence."
But not everyone is buying the explanation.
"There is some rumors that it's due to the freedom flu campaign going on," added Morales.