(WXYZ) — American Airlines flight cancelations are impacting metro Detroit travelers.
As of Friday, October 29th the airline tells 7 Action News they’ve canceled 2,387 flights as of 3 p.m. CT on Monday. That is about 11% of the airline's total flights a day.
American says the delays and cancelations are due to severe winds at DFW (Dallas Forth-Worth) last week that created, “crosswind limitations that sharply reduced arrival capacity by more than half.”
The airline says the weather caused staffing to run tight because crews members are out of their regular flight sequences.
Travel expert and owner of Faraway Places Travel, Theresa Winters shared some travel tips that can make holiday travel smoother:
- Download the Airline phone app or check their website frequently. “That way when there is changes or cancellations you are first to know.”
- Travel insurance. “Make sure you have travel insurance. And know what it covers they aren’t all created equally.”
- If you can, get a travel agent “Having someone on your side so you aren’t stuck in a 3-hour line a the airport with everyone else.”
- Avoid layovers in specific cities due to weather. “Try to avoid a layover in a place that has snow. So I’m in Michigan maybe people are going out to Arizona, that might be a bad option because Chicago is just as bad as Michigan.”
- Book directly through airlines. “In instances where there is a hiccup, it’s easier o get through to the airline specifically versus booking through a third-party site.”
American Airlines says “we continue to staff up across our entire operation and we will see more of our team returning in the coming months.”
You can read the full statement below:
Dear fellow team members,
We continue to welcome back more and more customers as travel returns, and our team has done an incredible job delivering day in and day out.
Of course, not every moment has been easy and these few days to close out October will be challenging. This week saw two days of severe winds in DFW, with gusts of up to 50 mph on Thursday, creating crosswind limitations that sharply reduced arrival capacity by more than half. This weather drove a large number of cancellations at DFW, as we could only use two runways instead of the usual five that handle our operation.
With additional weather throughout the system, our staffing begins to run tight as crew members end up out of their regular flight sequences. To make sure we are taking care of our customers and providing scheduling certainty for our crews, we have adjusted our operation for the last few days this month by proactively canceling some flights. We are taking this measure to minimize any inconvenience as much as possible. Most of the customers impacted by these changes are being rebooked the same day, and we apologize for having to make these changes.
Our team members are continuing to take great care of our customers and we anticipate getting through this brief irregular ops period quickly with the start of a new month.
The good news moving forward is that we continue to staff up across our entire operation and we will see more of our team returning in the coming months. Specifically, for flight attendants we have nearly 1,800 returning from leave starting Nov. 1 — and the remainder coming back by Dec. 1 — and will have 600+ new hire flight attendants on property by end of December. Additionally, hiring for our Airports is well underway and we anticipate 4,000 new team members joining us across the system in the fourth quarter. The hiring of pilots and within Tech Ops continues to take place, and we already began ramping up hiring in Reservations so more team members will be in place for the holiday season.
Our team is extraordinarily resilient, and we cannot thank each and every team member enough for all you are doing to take care of our customers as well as each other.
