FORT WORTH, Texas — American Airlines says only a few hundred of its late December flights remain without pilots scheduled to fly the plane.
An airline spokesman said Thursday that pilots were picking up extra flights and the airline had more on-call pilots in December than during other months.
The pilots’ union had said that more than 15,000 flights lacked a captain, co-pilot or both when a problem was discovered in the company’s scheduling system. Pilots were allowed to take vacation days in the last two weeks of December even if there wasn’t another pilot available to operate the flight.
For travelers who are scheduled to fly on American at that time, AAA said flyers who have purchased travel insurance should review their policies to better understand their options.
“What is particularly unfortunate and unique about this situation is that passengers booked on American Airlines between December 17th and 31st are being asked to take a bit of a gamble. Either trust that American will come up with the pilots or switch flights now and risk being charged a fee if the flight you were booked on is not ultimately cancelled,” says Suzanne Aresco, Director of Travel for AAA. “Even though AA is now saying that only a few hundred flights are without pilots, we still don’t know which flights those are”.
AAA said travelers should reach out to where they bought the ticket for updates of any itinerary changes.
American has about 15,000 pilots to operate roughly 200,000 flights scheduled during December. Fort Worth-based American is the world’s largest airline.
