Boeing MAX Plane Grounding Impacted Some South Florida Flights
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MIAMI (CBSMiami) - The impact of President Trump's order to ground all Boeing 737 MAX 8 and 9 planes continues to be felt in south Florida
Thousands of American Airlines passengers at Miami International Airport have been affected since the order was given on Wednesday.
Nearly 50 flights, most of them American Airlines flights, have been cancelled since Wednesday.
The disruption is expected to be felt through part of the weekend.
On Thursday American Airlines passenger Ismael Camara found himself waiting ten hours to get a rescheduled.
Flight back to college in North Carolina.
He was visiting Miami for spring break and had been planning to take a flight to Washington D.C. to visit his mother.
But the Boeing situation changed all that.
"I was unable to see my mother so it was a big inconvenience for me. And I almost had to drive 14 hours to North Carolina," he said.
President Trump ordered the grounding after a deadly plane crash in Ethiopia, and a similar deadly crash in Indonesia last October
While the planes are grounded, the FAA is allowing airlines to ferry them to one of their bases.
American Airlines has a fleet of 24 Max 8 planes.
On Thursday nearly a dozen planes parked off Lejeune road at MIA were scheduled to fly out with only pilots.
"We will ferrying some Boeing MAX 8 aircraft to various locations around the U.S. this morning for parking – some of the aircraft are already en route," said American Airlines in a statement. "These flights will only be with pilots – no passengers or flight attendants. A ferry flight will have a 96XX flight number."
American has a large maintenance facility in Tulsa so many of their two dozen Max's are headed there.
Others are headed for Orlando Melbourne Airport, Mobile Regional Airport, San Francisco International Airport, John F. Kennedy International Airport, McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, St. Louis Lambert International Airport, and Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.
This is being done to free up the space they take up on tarmacs.
