American Air Partner Resumes Flights After 675 Canceled

(Bloomberg) -- American Airlines Group Inc. resumed operations at a regional carrier Friday, after problems with a dispatch and crew-scheduling system forced the cancellation of 675 flights over two days, stranding passengers.

The outage affected about 4 percent of American’s global flight operations, primarily shorter routes from its hub in Charlotte, North Carolina, the carrier said by email. Operations at the affiliate, PSA Airlines, resumed at midday.

While the problem was fixed by morning, PSA couldn’t start flights again until it moved equipment and flight crews to the right locations. The affiliate serves nearly 90 destinations, primarily in the eastern U.S. American grounded 400 PSA flights Friday, after 275 cancellations Thursday.

Some passengers criticized the airline in exchanges over Twitter, with one woman complaining her 74-year-old mother was stranded with no help getting a hotel and a delay that caused her to miss her grandson’s graduation. A woman who was rebooked on a flight 24 hours after the original said it would make her miss a birthday celebration with her children.

The problem, which began late Thursday afternoon, involved a system operated out of PSA’s headquarters in Dayton, Ohio, and didn’t affect other American flights, the airline said. American, which is based in Fort Worth, Texas, moved passengers to flights on its main jet operations or other regional carriers.

“We never want to disrupt our customers’ travel plans, and we are sorry for the trouble this caused,” the carrier said in a statement.

To contact the reporter on this story: Mary Schlangenstein in Dallas at maryc.s@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Brendan Case at bcase4@bloomberg.net, Susan Warren, Tony Robinson

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