American Airlines

I'm not sure if I'd be confident flying on American Airlines again or not. They've cancelled 850 flights to conduct safety inspections on various airplanes. Such a concern for safety is good.

The problem is the timing of the inspections. It's painfully apparent that the record fine given to Southwest for failing to do required safety inspections is the cause, and other airlines are scrambling to catch up with inspections that may have been lax or wanting in the past, so they don't get such a large fine, too.

American has had the most cancelled flights. I see two possibilities. (1) American was one of the worst no-inspection offenders, and is only now doing the inspections so they don't get a huge fine. This would make me never willingly fly with them again. (2) All, many, or some of the other airlines are just as bad, but are still postponing inspections, because they don't want to look bad. This would make me only want to fly with American.

Personally, my guess is #2, because it seems less likely that American is the only offender than that everyone in the industry has done the same sort of thing. If so, then kudos to American for taking the publicity hit now, but getting everything up to snuff.