American Airlines Extending Boeing 737 Max Flight Cancellations
NEW YORK (CBSDFW.COM/AP) — American Airlines is extending cancellations of flights through April 24 due to the grounding of Boeing 737 Max aircrafts, as federal regulators continue to investigate two deadly crashes involving the plane model. Southwest Airlines is also continuing to make cancellations.
Fort Worth-based American has 24 Boeing 737 Max aircraft in its fleet, and said Sunday that it will be canceling about 90 flights a day. Not every flight that was previously scheduled to be on a Max aircraft will be canceled, and some flights scheduled to fly on other aircraft types may ultimately be canceled. The airline said it will contact affected fliers directly. When the plane was initially grounded , American said it operates 85 flights per day on the MAX 8, out of 6,700 departures.
Dallas-based Southwest, which has 34 Max aircraft, is making cancellations five days in advance, with an average of 130 daily cancellations. On Saturday, it also began to ferry all its Max aircraft to a facility in Victorville, California, without passengers, to free up space at the airports where they had been parked.
United Airlines, which has 14 Max aircraft, does not have any flights scheduled on the equipment through April 9. It doesn't expect any future cancellations as a result of the grounding of the planes, and it is using alternate aircraft to make up for their being grounded.
Aviation authorities around the world grounded Boeing 737 Max aircraft earlier this month following deadly crashes involving the plane model in Ethiopia and off the coast of Indonesia, which occurred within five months of each other.
(© Copyright 2019 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)