American Airlines Grounds 14 'Project Oasis' 737s, Cancels Dozens of Flights
American Airlines is in the midst of revolutionizing its domestic fleet, in good ways and bad. While it has retrofitted more than 600 aircraft with high-speed Wi-Fi, it's also retrofitting the interiors of some of them with more seats, and less legroom.
Most of AA's Boeing 737-800s will be modified to add 12 more seats, in order to match the 30-inch pitch and 172-seat capacity of AA's 737 MAX aircraft. And soon, the airline's Airbus A321 will start being retrofit to squeeze in 3-9 more seats to "harmonize" the number of seats for the entire A321 fleet at 190. The internal name of this project: Project Oasis.
Now it turns out that American Airlines has hit a snag in this quest for aircraft density. As confirmed by an American Airlines representative, the world's largest airline has "identified an issue with the quality of work conducted on overhead bins on two of these Boeing 737-800 aircraft" — and as a consequence, decided to ground 14 of the refurbished planes.
After further inspection by American, the work that was conducted on these two aircraft was not up to our standards. Out of an abundance of caution, we have proactively removed from service the additional 12 aircraft that were updated by this vendor and have notified the FAA. We will perform additional inspection work on these 14 aircraft. Though the issue did not impact the safety of flight of these aircraft, we are working with our vendor and the FAA to immediately address this issue.
The grounding of these 14 aircraft has caused the cancellation of 40 flights on Thursday. AA confirms that all affected passengers affected by these cancellations have been rebooked. It's unclear how long the airline will ground these aircraft and if cancellations will continue into this week.
While the airline would only say that the work was done by a "long-time FAA-licensed vendor," it's reported that these 14 aircraft were retrofit by Aviation Technical Services at Paine Field, the home of Boeing.
TPG featured card
at Bilt's secure site
Terms & restrictions apply. See rates & fees.
| 1X | Choose to earn up to 1X points on rent and mortgage payments with no transaction fee |
| 2X | Earn 2X points + the option to earn 4% back in Bilt Cash on everyday purchases |
Pros
- Choice to earn up to 1 Bilt Point per dollar spent on rent and mortgage payments
- Elevated everyday earnings with both Bilt Points and the option to earn Bilt Cash
- $400 Bilt Travel Portal hotel credit per year (up to $200 biannually)
- $200 Bilt Cash annually
- Priority Pass membership
- No foreign transaction fees
Cons
- Moderate annual fee
- Designed primarily for members seeking a premium, all-in-one card
- Earn points on housing with no transaction fee
- Choose to earn 4% back in Bilt Cash on everyday spend. Use Bilt Cash to unlock point earnings on rent and mortgage payments with no transaction fee, up to 1X.
- 2X points on everyday spend
- $400 Bilt Travel Hotel credit. Applied twice a year, as $200 statement credits, for qualifying Bilt Travel Portal hotel bookings.
- $200 Bilt Cash (awarded annually). At the end of each calendar year, any Bilt Cash balance over $100 will expire.
- Welcome bonus (subject to approval): 50,000 Bilt Points + Gold Status after spending $4,000 on everyday purchases in the first 90 days + $300 of Bilt Cash.
- Priority Pass ($469/year value). See Guide to Benefits.
- Bilt Point redemptions include airlines, hotels, future rent and mortgage payments, Lyft rides, statement credits, student loan balances, a down payment on a home, and more.