500 flights canceled as American rechecks wires

Frustrations and worries mounted Tuesday at U.S. airports after American Airlines said it was canceling as many as 500 flights for another round of maintenance checks. More flight delays are expected today.

Cancellations by the world’s largest airline were the biggest yet in a rash of maintenance- related disruptions for passengers over the last month that has been accompanied by fare hikes, increasingly crowded planes, higher fuel surcharges and airline shutdowns.

An estimated 54,000 travelers had their plans disrupted Tuesday.

Since late last month, American has canceled almost 1,000 flights to inspect the wiring bundles in its MD-80 fleet. The airline operates 300 MD-80s, with an average age of 18 years.

American decided to re- inspect its fleet after the Federal Aviation Administration raised concerns about an inspection last month. The airline said it was rechecking the spacing of the ties on the wiring bundles and the direction in which the retention clips and cords were facing.

“It goes without saying that this second grounding is beyond annoying,” said Joe Brancatelli, who publishes Joe Sent Me, a website for business travelers. “It’s one thing to ground planes for emergency inspections. . . . It’s entirely another matter to ground the planes again because the emergency inspections may not have been done properly.”

At Los Angeles International Airport, 15 American flights were canceled as of midafternoon Tuesday. Four more flights were scrubbed at San Diego International Airport, two at John Wayne Airport in Orange County and one each at Bob Hope Airport in Burbank and Ontario International Airport.

Dozens of stranded passengers at LAX lined up at the American counter to re-book their flights, many clutching red slips of paper containing an apology from the airline.

Raul Garza, 39, arrived at the airport to find that his flight home to Austin, Texas, had been canceled. Garza called the incident “a red flag for American” and said he might avoid the carrier if cancellations continued to occur.

“Flying nowadays is so much more inconvenient than it used to be,” Garza said. “It’s more stressful and it seems less safe.”

American said there was no cause for alarm.

“We’ve been working in good faith to ensure that we are in complete compliance with this airworthiness directive,” said Gerard Arpey, chief executive of American’s parent company, AMR Corp. “We regret and apologize that we are once again causing inconvenience to our customers, but we will continue to work in good faith until we satisfy all of the technical issues.”

The airline’s second round of cancellations did not go unnoticed by Roxanne DeVries of Westminster, who was looking forward to visiting friends and family in Denver on March 26 when American canceled her flight for maintenance checks.

Then, DeVries figured American’s inspections made her feel “better safe than sorry.” But Tuesday she was not so sure.

“I trusted that they fixed the problem,” DeVries, 32, said. “Did they not fix it? Why were we flying if they’re redoing the same inspection? That’s really scary.”

American said it decided at 1 p.m. Pacific time Tuesday to cancel the remaining MD-80 flights for the day to reinspect the bundling of wires in the aircraft’s wheel wells after a random check by FAA inspectors Monday. Customers were being automatically notified, the airline said, but the announcement took many passengers at LAX by surprise.

The Fort Worth-based airline is the country’s largest operator of MD-80 planes, which mostly fly domestic routes.

Maintenance issues have taken on a higher profile at U.S. airports for weeks after the FAA assessed a $10.2-million fine against Southwest Airlines on March 6 for missed safety inspections.

Since then, thousands of travelers have had flights canceled and travel plans disrupted as American, United Airlines, Delta Air Lines and American Eagle (also owned by AMR) conducted voluntary inspections in conjunction with the FAA’s audit of aircraft maintenance records.

Last week the FAA released findings from the first phase of an extensive inspection of the nation’s airlines, about 115 carriers in all.

In about 2,400 audits in the last half of March, inspectors found that the airlines complied with airworthiness directives about 99% of the time.

The agency is continuing to investigate four airlines, which it declined to name, for possible failure to comply with specific regulations.

Two airlines failed to complete inspections of wire bundles, one didn’t finish repetitive inspections, and another lacked a plan for compliance with an FAA directive, the agency said.

On Tuesday, American spokesman Tim Wagner said he did not know whether American was one of the airlines involved in the investigation. The second phase of the FAA audit will conclude June 30.

Maintenance checks aren’t the only problem facing U.S. airlines. With rising fuel costs, fewer planes in the sky and heightened safety concerns over aging aircraft, travelers can expect flights to be more expensive, crowded and late.

Richard Aboulafia, an aviation analyst with Teal Group, said the latest debacle might push American to buy replacement planes earlier than it would like. Airlines have been reluctant to use up valuable cash to replace aging aircraft as they contend with higher fuel costs and a slowing economy that could slump air travel.

“They’re somewhat caught in a bind,” Aboulafia said. “They can’t fund a new airplane, but the aging fleet is costing them more to operate, not just in maintenance but from risk of cancellations because of missed inspections.”

George Gavallos was flying home to San Francisco with his wife, Amy, after a sport fishing trip in Mexico when the second leg of the couple’s American flight, out of LAX, was canceled.

“It is frustrating that it keeps on happening,” said Gavallos, 36, adding that he had a cooler full of fish that he needed to get home. Still, he said, the cancellation wouldn’t keep him from flying in the future, noting that the maintenance checks seemed to be an industrywide problem.

“It’s not just American that this is happening to,” he said.

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andrea.chang@latimes.com

Times staff writers Tiffany Hsu and Peter Pae contributed to this report.