After Stranding Thousands Over the Weekend, More Flight Cancellations For American Airlines
DFW AIRPORT (CBSDFW.COM) — More cancellation chaos at the airport. This time, it's American Airlines.
The company blames the strong winds North Texas experienced last week for putting crew members out of place for work.
According to the website, Flightaware, as of 7:15 Monday morning, 269 American Airlines flights had been canceled and 117 delayed. Add that to the more than 1600 canceled flights over the weekend and James Ollerton is only one of hundreds of thousands of frustrated passengers.
Ollerton said, "It's been long, it was a long time in the airport."
The situation is somewhat reminiscent of flight issues seen last month at Dallas Love Field Airport with Southwest Airlines.
But according to American, staffing looks to be the issue over the last few days. With the bad weather now behind them, the airline says 1800 flight attendants will return to work today.
The company says they are looking to hire 4000 new employees by the end of the year.
CBS 11's Nicole Jacobs spoke with a woman trying to get to Detroit who said she was forced to come out of pocket with more money than they planned to spend. Shelli Colwell said, "A lot of inconvenient because we had to find a hotel… Call about the rental car… We had to pay for extra parking in Detroit. So it's a lot of inconvenience."
For now, American Airlines is suggesting passengers arrive at the airport 2 hours ahead of time and check their flight status before heading to the airport.