American Airlines flights canceled

TAMPA --  Would-be American Airlines passengers never got off the ground this morning after learning the jets they were scheduled to board will undergo a federal safety inspection.

Nationwide, about 200 flights are affected. By midmorning in Tampa, American had canceled seven outbound flights to Dallas, Chicago and New York's LaGuardia Airport. The latest cancellation was American Flight 1395, a 1 p.m. departure to Dallas.

After that, all the airline's flights were scheduled to leave close to their regularly scheduled times. But passengers heading into Tampa also were running into problems. American canceled seven inbound flights from Dallas, Chicago and St. Louis, said Kelly Figley, a spokesman at Tampa International.

This morning at TIA, frustrated passengers slumped against the American Airlines ticket counter in a line that stretched hundreds deep.

Standing at the back was Paul Caplan, 55, of Chicago.

"Your flight is canceled, period," Caplan said American personnel told him.

He was on the phone all morning with Orbitz and other online airline ticket providers searching for a new flight home to Chicago. For now, he's stuck in line and on hold.

Maybe he'll get home today. Maybe he'll spend another day in the warm weather.

"The only bad option," he said, "is standing in line and waiting all day."

By noon the long lines had subsided, with many people slated to take the canceled morning flights receiving travel vouchers and clearing out to nearby hotels.

After his morning ordeal, Caplan is renting a car, driving to Boca Raton this afternoon and leaving from Fort Lauderdale at 6 a.m. Friday.

"There's no direct flights," he said. "So that's it."

Others, like Bill Murray, a 71-year-old retired carpet salesman from Zephyrhills, were luckier. Fearing the worst after an hourlong wait in line, he was handed a ticket on a 1:40 p.m. flight to Dallas -- about one hour after his original flight was scheduled to depart.

"I lucked out," he said. "I couldn't even complain."

The airline was substituting a larger Boeing 767 for one inbound flight from Dallas to move more passengers into Tampa, she said, but that wouldn't come close to accommodating all the displaced travelers. "They're trying really hard to get people out, but it is spring break, so the flights are really full,'' Figley said.

There were no cancellations of American flights to and from Miami and San Juan, Puerto Rico, because the airline uses different models of aircraft for those flights.

Airport authorities said the inspections concern wire harnesses, but they declined to elaborate. The inspections are scrutinizing MD-80 jets, sometimes called "Super 80" jets.

The Associated Press reports that nationwide American has canceled about 200 flights, less than 10 percent of its scheduled service. About 50 departures each were canceled at American's hubs at Dallas-Fort Worth and Chicago O'Hare international airports.

The MD-80 is the workhorse of the American fleet, reported CNNMoney.com. American's Web site says the aircraft accounts for 300 of the airline's fleet of 655 jets.

The need for the new inspections became known during an audit of American by a joint team of inspectors from the Federal Aviation Administration and the Fort Worth-based airline, according to a statement from American.

"We are reinspecting the MD-80s to make sure the wiring is installed and secured exactly according to the directive," American spokesman Tim Wagner said in the statement, which did not describe the function of the wiring.

"We are in the process of completing the inspections on the remaining airplanes and will return them to service on a rolling basis throughout the day," Wagner said.

Meanwhile, passengers are left reeling. In a process that would "escalate" and "ripple" throughout the day, Ed Cooley, senior director of operations at TIA, said American Airlines is in the process of sending at least two additional aircraft to Tampa to collect passengers from the canceled flights.

"It's going to be a balancing situation because obviously airplanes are out of place now, flight crews are out of place," Cooley said. "So they're going to have to rebalance the system, and that's probably going to take pretty much all of the day today."

Service interruptions to American Airlines flights are expected all day. Airport official advise American Airlines customers to contact the airline for updated travel information.

-- Casey Cora, Times staff writer