PSA Airlines (OH, Dayton James M. Cox) has cancelled some 2,800 flights due to a week-long technical glitch which affected the American Airlines subsidiary's crew scheduling system, USA Today has reported. The carrier has already stabilised its systems but is only expected to return to the full schedule on June 21. The meltdown started on June 14 and mostly affected flights departing from Charlotte Int'l, although some flights out of each of Washington National and Philadelphia Int'l were also cancelled. The irregularities spiked during the weekend, stranding thousands of passengers at the airport. The effects of the technical issues were aggravated by high load factors on all flights, which meant that there were not enough empty seats to rebook all stranded passengers. Although the glitch did not affect the parent company nor any other carrier operating under the American Eagle brand, they all suffered from spillover effects due to the irregularities for connecting passengers. PSA Airlines, a fully-owned subsidiary of American Airlines, operates around 800 flights per day on behalf of its parent, some 12% of the entire network. According to the ch-aviation fleets module, it operates a fleet of 129 Bombardier Aerospace regional jets, including thirty-five CRJ200s, forty CRJ700s, and fifty-four CRJ900s.<doc-sep>DAYTON — UPDATE @ 6:30 p.m. American Airlines spokesman Ross Feinstein said the 675 flights affected by the “technical issue” at PSA Airlines headquarters in Dayton are about 4 percent of American’s daily total of 7,000 flights. Fourteen of 28 PSA flights in Dayton were canceled Friday. American Airlines said they don’t think it will take until Sunday to resume normal operations, they think sometime Saturday. For example, there are 30 open seats on one flight out of Dayton Saturday. Feinstein said this issue was strictly contained to PSA, and that their computer operation is not tied to theirs. All of American’s eight other regional carriers and American had no problems. Although headquartered in Dayton, the biggest problem was to flights in and out of Charlotte. UPDATE @ 12:10 p.m. At least 16 American Airlines flights serviced through Dayton were canceled Thursday and Friday morning after service was halted at 4 p.m. last night due to technical difficulty in its operation center. While the airline's flights, serviced regionally by PSA, are expected to be back on schedule as of noon today, many passengers affected by the cancellations will still be out of luck. American Airlines may not fully recover from the cancellations until Sunday, said Terrence Slaybaugh, director of aviation for the city of Dayton and Dayton International Airport said. But, Feinstein said there were tickets available on American Airlines flights departing from Dayton on Friday and Saturday. Airlines typically have agreements with other airlines to take on passengers when flights are cancelled. American Airlines makes their deals with Delta Airlines, said Slaybaugh. “But we just don't have the capacity to help everyone,” he said. “It’s hard for them to just move people to other flights.” Traveler Chris Williams was at the Dayton airport Friday morning, trying to get home to Greenville, North Carolina. He had multiple flights canceled and should have originally gotten home at 11:30 p.m. Thursday but now wasn’t scheduled to arrive back in Greenville until 7:30 p.m. Friday. “I’m flying two different airlines and I’ve got three flights to get home and it’s still a little iffy, so here we go,” he said. Williams travels a lot for work but said all the cancellations were “very frustrating.” “I’m kind of used to it but it’s never been as bad as this …They said the system went down with PSA, and just the communication and everything,” Williams said. Dayton resident Kevin Haldeman was in California for work earlier this week and ran into trouble when trying to travel home Thursday. His connecting flight from Chicago to Dayton was at first delayed for more than three hours and was eventually canceled. “(I) didn’t have a firm flight or anything so I ended up getting a rental car and driving home last night …(I) got back about 3:30 this morning,” Haldeman said Friday. UPDATE @ 11:25 a.m.: A "technical issue" at PSA Airlines headquarters in Dayton disrupted an estimated 675 flights since Thursday night. The issue has been resolved and the carrier expects to resume operations this afternoon, American Airlines media relations officials said in a statement issued moments ago. “Our team members are focused on taking care of our customers by accommodating them on mainline flights or other regional carriers. PSA canceled 275 flights on June 14 and 400 flights today. “We never want to disrupt our customers’ travel plans, and we are sorry for the trouble this caused. Customer relations will be reaching out to all of those who have been impacted by this issue. We are experiencing a technical issue that has caused the need to cancel the rest of our flights this evening. Our team is working hard with American Airlines to resolve the issue as quickly as possible and accommodate customers. — PSA Airlines (@PSAAirlinesInc) June 15, 2018 The problem began in Dayton on Thursday afternoon because of issues with the carrier’s dispatch and crew scheduling system. Ross Feinstein, spokesman with American Airlines, which owns PSA, confirmed the Bloomberg report that the problem began in Dayton. He would not go into detail or explain what is meant by “technical issue.” According to Bloomberg, the outage has affected about 4 percent of American’s global flight operations, primarily shorter routes from its hub in Charlotte, N.C., American Airlines officials said by email Friday. INITIAL REPORT Flights to and from Dayton International Airport are being affected by the technical issue affecting Charlotte-Douglas International Airport in North Carolina. Our news partner WSOC-TV is reporting that all PSA flights were canceled Thursday night because of the issue. PSA is a regional carrier of American Airlines and operates under the American Eagle brand. More than a dozen outbound American Airlines flights from Dayton have been canceled. At least five American Airlines arrivals have been canceled and one flight has been delayed. Go to flydayton.com to see if your flight is affected. At least four American Airlines departures from Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport have been canceled. We will update this developing report.<doc-sep>
American Airlines said it expected normal operations to resume at its PSA Airlines regional affiliate Thursday, though there appeared to be some lingering delays and cancellations on the feeder carrier. More than 55 flights operated by PSA had been canceled as of 7:20 a.m. ET and another 78 delayed, according to flight-tracking service FlightStats. That’s a significant improvement as compared to the 323 cancellations on PSA that FlightStats counted for Wednesday, but it suggests disruptions remain for the American Airlines subsidiary. PSA has been hammered with cancellations and delays since a computer glitch first snarled the unit’s operation a week ago. FLIGHT TRACKER: Is your flight on time? Wednesday's cancellations accounted for about six percent of PSA's entire daily schedule, with most of the problems at Charlotte. That airport has been the hardest hit over the past week from PSA's problems, though American's hubs at Philadelphia and Washington Reagan National have also seen disruptions. Overall, more than 2,800 PSA-operated flights have been canceled since Thursday (June 14), disrupting tens of thousands of American customers. Many have flooded social media channels with complaints about the disruption, with a number of passengers saying they’ve been stuck for days after their original flights were canceled. That’s left American in damage-control mode for the issue at one of its feeder partners. “We understand that these cancellations have been frustrating for our customers, and teams from PSA and American have been working around the clock to get things back to normal as quickly as possible,” the carrier said in a Tuesday statement. As for PSA, its technical issue involved problems with its crew scheduling and tracking system, according to the Dallas Business Journal. The issue is specific to American’s PSA regional carrier, which flies 50- to 76-seat regional jets that feed passengers to American’s hubs. The glitch is not affecting any of American’s “mainline” flights or flights on other partners, but passengers scheduled to connect to or from those flights via PSA might be affected if their connecting flights are canceled. PSA flies about 800 flights a day under American’s regional American Eagle brand, accounting for about 12 percent of American’s entire daily schedule.