From the Sun Sentinel:



American Airlines has canceled an unusually high number of flights in recent days, as the airline bickers with its pilots and plans to reduce service in coming weeks.

On Tuesday afternoon, American Airlines had canceled 51 flights, more than double the number of the airline with the next-most cancellations, according to FlightAware.com. Cancellations on Tuesday included three at O'Hare International Airport, according to FlightStats.com.. This week, the carrier has canceled 243 flights nationwide, far more than any other airline.

Cancellations and flight reductions are due to an increase in the number of pilots calling in sick and an increase in maintenance reports filed by pilots, said spokesman Bruce Hicks.

The airline will reduce its schedule through October by 1 to 2 percent, Hicks said.

"It's an attempt to preplan and better accommodate our passengers by canceling in advance and changing the schedule to reaccommodate people ... to give them plenty of notice before they get to the airport and find a flight canceled," Hicks said, adding that the company is not aware of an organized job action against the airline by pilots. "We recognize these adjustments may affect our customers, and we apologize for any inconvenience."

AMR, parent of American Airlines, is in bankruptcy protection and has not reached a deal on contract cuts with its pilots union, about 100 of whom are expected to picket at Chicago O'Hare Thursday. Instead, the company has begun imposing pay and benefits cuts, along with new work rules and outsourcing more flying to regional jets.

The pilot union, the Allied Pilots Association, has not sponsored a sickout by pilots, said spokesman Dennis Tajer. "There is no union-endorsed activity," he said.

Still, pilots are not in great moods.

"The pilots of American Airlines are angry," APA President Keith Wilson wrote in a note to members Tuesday. "While AMR management continues paying lip service to needing a consensual agreement with us, their punitive approach of extracting far more value than they need is hardly conducive to reaching a consensual agreement. In fact, they have made that critical task even more difficult."

By Tuesday afternoon, American Airlines had canceled 35 flights nationwide for Wednesday.

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Look, I am incredibly loyal to AA, even when they have ticked me off in the past. I keep coming back because I do feel that, compared to UA/DL/US, they are the best legacy carrier in the USA.

HOWEVER, I cannot trust them right now. The trip I am currently on - the outbound was impacted by this pilot situation, and the return was too. I had obligations on Saturday that I will no longer make because my Friday night flight was cancelled.

So, right now, I cannot trust AA. I have cancelled a future reservation in a few weeks and taken my business to another carrier than I feel I can trust a bit more right now. In that way, I somewhat agree with the author because I did, in fact, take my business elsewhere. Hesitantly...but I did.

I will most certainly come back to AA once they have their stuff back in order a bit. But right now, based on personal experiences + stories of others, I cannot trust them. Which is a shame.

The AA pilots are feeling a lot of pain and I have a feeling they are going to communicate this pain to the passengers, so the WSJ article is good advice. A 5.8% cancellation rate is ridiculous.

Unless you like pain ;)

Oh well done pilots. In some parts of the world you would be put in prison for doing this. If you don't like your employer then quit, it is a simple as that. Stop taking your job and your customers for granted and behaving selfishly, the FA's made an agreement to take cuts, but your too superior to do it?

Fortunatley for AA they can impose a contract that can make employees more productive, which can offset the attempts at pilots sabotaging the company. How long will this take because this cannot go on for much longer? Also fortunatley UA/CO is a basketcase and have been delaying many flights recently, although they seemed to have improved.

Perhaps AA can wet lease some planes off another airline like Frontier during the union action. BA wet leased a Titan 757 for Gatwick operations this summer due to an aircraft shortage.

Man, that is brutal.

When reading articles like this in the WSJ, the Sun Sentinel, or elsewhere, it is well to remember that the writer is a union member and almost always a strong supporter of unions in general. This should not influence what is written, but almost always does. News writers feel it necessary when writing about labor-management disputes to write the article that the head of that particular union would write (in some cases, it is the union's PR staff that has written the article and shipped it over).

When reading articles written by travel writers, it is also well to remember that they generally don't travel much. When they do, it is on comped tickets that identify them as travel writers, so they have a far different experience than normal travelers do. The typical travel writer knows less about travel (from personal experience) than the average Kettle does. They do read a lot about travel, though, and tell us what they have read.

Not to mention the writer often gives it sensualistic effect to grab the reader's attention. If AA had a cancellation rate of about 6% then there was still a 94% chance that your flight would go as planned. Of course, yesterday there were extended delays due to weather in the East.

I'm loving all these tears. Remember when there was generous applause for AA executive management's strategy of using bankruptcy court to force weak/worthless/un-American employees to bend over?

Now who's laughing?

BTW, I do have flights scheduled on AA in October. Most people are going to do what they've always done: book based on price.

I think people overlook a bigger statistic (particularly for those of us who make connections): Earlier this week the "on-time" arrival (less than 14 minutes late) was only 39%.

Lies, damn lies, and statisics. :D

Look at it another way if a normal cancellation rate is 1.4% then the odds of cancellation have quadrupled. This does not even consider delays.

This seems a little mean-spirited. Aren't the passengers just innocent bystanders?

Yea, right, the WSJ is a liberal rag. ROFLMAO

I'll be one of them next month. Life's not fair. :)

Besides, it seems that the pilots are living by the law. They're not making that extra push to help the company out, which is what's causing all the issues. IMO, a company that can't operate unless its employees are kind enough to sacrifice in order to redress management's shortcomings does not deserve to survive.

I hear you. It seems the bottom line is bankruptcy, whether personal or corporate, is awful.

All the legacies have declared BK, American is just the last.

I think thread title is misleading.

This is a WSJ blog. Big difference then "WSJ Recommends"