Flight Information: American Airlines cancels your flight

If you’re flying American Airlines this weekend, I have two words for you - good luck.

“More pain for travelers - American grounds 595 flights”

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) – The chaos facing air travelers continued Friday as American Airlines grounded 595 more flights, or 25% of its schedule, and stranded tens of thousands of passengers.

Friday marked the fourth straight day of trouble for American - the nation’s largest airline - which has canceled nearly 2,500 flights affecting some 300,000 passengers.

Overall, U.S. carriers have shut down about 3,700 flights since late March in response to failed Federal Aviation Administration safety inspections of MD-80 airplanes. The FAA is conducting industrywide inspections of all jets that will continue through the end of June.

The canceled flights have reduced air travel to a crawl for many passengers. They come at a difficult time in air travel: Carriers are being hammered by ever-higher fuel costs and passengers are facing rising tickets prices and delays.

“It’s a very troubled time for the industry,” said Air Travelers Association president David Stempler. “It leaves passengers in a very unsettled state.”

Basically, this is a good news, bad news situation. The bad news is obvious - once again a ridiculous number of passengers are getting screwed. The good news is, someone is paying attention to safety again.

The last seven years has seen the U.S. government more or less refuse to conduct any type of oversight over any type of business. It has been a seven-year, haphazard experiment in Milton Friedman economics. Basically it’s been an attempt to remake the U.S. into Chile, circa 1974.

When it comes to the airline industry, where one incident can cause hundreds to lose their lives, one would expect there would be some type of oversight. But that just hasn’t proven to be the case.

“The FAA would have us believe that what took place was an isolated incident that has been corrected,” House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman James Oberstar (D-Minn.) said of recent revelations about Southwest Airlines. “Clearly this is not an isolated incident … but rather a systematic breakdown of the FAA’s oversight role. It is malfeasance bordering on corruption.”

So hang in there travelers. Maybe see if you can get into your airline’s lounge for $25 or so if you’re stranded. And remember, at very least, someone is looking out for you.

–WKW