American Airlines has cancelled 570 flights today (11 April).

American Airlines (AA) has cancelled 570 of its flights today (11 April) while it continues to carry out inspections of its MD-80 fleet.

This follows similar AA cancellations already this week – 930 flights on 10 April, 1,094 on 9 April, and 460 on 8 April.

The inspections are being carried out by the airline to ensure its compliance with Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) guidelines that relate to the “bundling of wires in the wheel-well of the MD-80 aircraft”. The airline has stressed that the inspections focus on technical compliance issues, and are not safety-related.

Speaking on Tuesday, Gerard Arpey, Chairman and CEO of AA, apologised to passengers. He said: “We’ve been working in good faith to ensure that we are in complete compliance with this airworthiness directive. We regret and apologise 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 related to this airworthiness directive.”

To help avoid such disruption in future, AA is planning to contract an independent third party to review its compliance with FAA directives.

The airline is confident that full service will soon be resolved: “We continue to inspect every airplane to ensure we are in total agreement with the specifications of the directive. We will get back to a full schedule as quickly as possible,” Arpey said.

A link has been created on the AA website ^[1] to allow customers to check their flights – and to find out more about compensation entitlement.