American Airlines cutting flights as summer season starts

DALLAS (AP) — American Airlines will cut hundreds of flights over the next three weeks to avoid overloading its operation as demand for summer air travel rises faster than once expected.

Spokeswoman Sarah Jantz said Tuesday that the cuts could average 50 to 60 flights a day the rest of June and between 50 and 80 a day in the first half of July. That is potentially more than 1% of American's schedule.

On Tuesday, the airline had scrubbed about 130 flights by late afternoon Central time, according to tracking service FlightAware. Jantz said up to 40 were due to bad weather.

Jantz said the cuts are “building in additional resilience and certainty to our operation.” She said American is making the most cuts on routes where it has multiple flights to provide options for rebooking passengers.

The union representing American's pilots said company management failed to move quickly enough to retrain 1,600 pilots who were temporarily sidelined last year or replace some of the 1,000 who took early retirement.

American and other U.S. airlines have been barred from furloughing workers during the pandemic as a condition of billions they received in federal aid to help cover payroll. American and United furloughed thousands of workers in October, when the aid and the ban on furloughs expired, then brought them back in December when Congress renewed the pandemic relief.

American’s management “did not maintain its own infrastructure in preparation for our industry’s recovery,” said Eric Ferguson, president of the Allied Pilots Association. The union has since found ways to fix “the pilot training and staffing shortfalls that the airline now faces,” he said.

Jantz said American has reserve employees it can use, but stormy summer weather in places like Dallas-Fort Worth International...