American Airlines cancels flights at RDU, elsewhere due to weather, labor problems

American Airlines says it will cancel dozens of flights a day across its system in the coming weeks, because of a combination of low staffing, poor weather and rising demand for air travel.

American said the cuts amount to about 1% of its previously scheduled flights in July. The airline said bad weather this month at its hubs in Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth and Miami had forced it to reroute some flight crews and rest others who had run out of eligible work time.

“That, combined with the labor shortages some of our vendors are contending with and the incredibly quick ramp up of customer demand, has led us to build in additional resilience and certainty to our operation by adjusting a fraction of our scheduled flying through mid-July,” American said in a written statement.

The airline said it was targeting the cuts in places where customers would have options to rebook on another American flight. At Raleigh-Durham International Airport on Monday, American canceled one of five nonstop flights to its hub at Dallas-Fort Worth and one of nine nonstop flights to its hub in Charlotte.

Altogether, American canceled three arriving and departing flights from RDU on Monday, out of 77 on its schedule. American is the second busiest airline in the Triangle by passenger volume after Delta.

Because the cuts are being made in advance, American said it hopes it can book customers on alternative flights before they’re scheduled to travel.

Billions in government bailouts allowed airlines such as American to hang on to employees during the coronavirus pandemic, though not without uncertainty.

American announced last summer that it would cut 40,000 jobs, including 19,000 through furloughs and layoffs, when the first round of stimulus ran out. With government help, it began recalling those workers in December, only to issue layoff notices to 13,000 employees in February. Those were rescinded when Congress passed the American Rescue Plan Act in March.

The airline business has rebounded this year, primarily due to leisure travel. More than 772,000 passengers flew through RDU in May, nearly 7 times the number the same month a year ago. But that’s still 41% fewer passengers than in May 2019.