Updated from 12:42 p.m. EDT
Delta Air Lines(DAL Quote - Cramer on DAL - Stock Picks) will cancel about 3% of its flights Thursday and Friday as it reinspects the wiring on its MD-88 aircraft, becoming the third major U.S. carrier to ground part of its fleet this month.
AMR's(AMR Quote - Cramer on AMR - Stock Picks) American Airlines
called off flights Wednesday and Thursday in order to complete a similar inspection on MD-80 jets following a Federal Aviation Administration directive.
Delta said it will cancel about 275 flights. American dropped 325 flights on Wednesday and said it would cancel 132 more on Thursday. Delta and its regional partners operate about 4,000 daily flights, while American and its partners have around 3,200.
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American and Delta are the primary U.S. operators of the McDonnell Douglas aircraft. American has 300 MD-80s in its fleet, while Delta has 117 MD-88s.
"Delta is working in full partnership with the FAA and is proactively and voluntarily revalidating the full compliance of a prior airworthiness directive completed earlier this year," the company said Thursday.
Delta said it expects to inspect 70% of its MD-88 fleet by early evening, with normal operations resuming by Friday. The carrier said passengers should check their flight status before leaving for the airport on Thursday.
The reinspections reflect enhanced auditing of aircraft maintenance records by the FAA, a step that followed an ongoing Congressional review of a 2007 move by
Southwest(LUV Quote - Cramer on LUV - Stock Picks) to defer fuselage inspections on 46 Boeing 737s. Earlier this month, Southwest
canceled some flights to examine a group of its planes.
In American's case, the airline said that during an audit, a joint team of airline and FAA inspectors raised questions about how a certain bundle of wires is secured to the MD-80. Delta's decision to reinspect followed American's. No audit was performed at Delta.
Kevin Mitchell, chairman of the Business Travel Coalition, said the American and Delta reinspections are examples of "the way the system ought to work." Mitchell said he is more concerned about the increasing amount of maintenance sent to other countries. American and Delta are among the carriers with the least international outsourcing.
Know What You Own: DAL operates in the airline industry, and some of the other stocks in its field include
JetBlue(JBLU Quote - Cramer on JBLU - Stock Picks),
Continental(CAL Quote - Cramer on CAL - Stock Picks),
UAL(UAUA Quote - Cramer on UAUA - Stock Picks) and
US Airways(LCC Quote - Cramer on LCC - Stock Picks). These stocks were recently trading at ($5.82, +4.49%), ($19.72, +2.23%), ($22.11, +0.55%) and ($8.36, -1.99%) respectively. For more on the value of knowing what you own, visit TheStreet.com's
Investing A-to-Z section.
Ted Reed
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