American Airlines staff shortages: Is my flight canceled?

By Michael Grothaus

June 21, 2021

If you have an American Airlines flight booked between now and mid-July, you’re going to want to check if the flight is still scheduled before heading to the airport. That’s because American Airlines is canceling hundreds of flights over the next three weeks, reports CNN.

The reason partly comes down to labor shortages. As America comes out of the pandemic, more people than ever are traveling again—and companies large and small are having problems filling job vacancies. This dual hit means American Airlines is both overwhelmed with rising customer numbers and understaffed at the same time. The result: canceled flights.

As an American Airlines spokesperson told CNN, “the first few weeks of June have brought unprecedented weather to our largest hubs, heavily impacting our operation and causing delays, canceled flights, and disruptions to crew member schedules and our customers’ plans. 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.”

CNN says American Airlines will cancel between 50 and 80 flights each day going forward. So how do you find out if your flight is canceled? American Airlines said they’ll notify passengers whose flight are canceled, but if you don’t want to wait, you can check on the status of your flight one of these ways:

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