American Airline Cancellations Affect XNA

Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport is just one of many affected by American Airlines flight cancellations.

This comes after the airline failed to reach a contract agreement with the pilot’s union.

“We had three that were cancelled, I believe it was two days ago. One in Dallas and one in Chicago and one to New York, but other than that not as much. we are primarily and American Eagle market, we do have several American Airlines flights a day but the American Airlines are more of the one’s impacted than the eagle flights,” say XNA Director, Kelly Johnson.

Flight cancellations came one day after the bankrupt airline announced plans to cut its flight schedule by 2% through October.

“The good news is that the percentage of flights affected only equate to 1.25 percent than what’s going on in their entire system,” explains Johnson.

 Even though some passengers haven’t dealt with the cancellations yet, they say it’s just a matter of time before they will.   

“Probably there are so few airlines around these days,” says American Eagle Passenger, John Ryan.

Danny Livingston says he was in Chicago earlier this week when a flight was cancelled.

“When I got to the gate for my flight to XNA they told me that the flight previously was cancelled because they had only one passenger show up for the flight and I found it very hard to believe.”

And for as often as he flies, he says he just has to deal with it.

“It’s very frustrating, unfortunately or fortunately I fly every week so if I let this kind of stuff drive me crazy I would have to retire,” adds Livingston.

Johnson says the airliner is trying to accommodate passengers.

“They’ve been proactive in letting the folks know that there has been a problem, cancellation and we can get you on this flight as opposed to this flight and maybe even reschedule your flight if necessary.”