American Airlines is facing a compensation bill of more than $191,000 after it sent the wrong plane to pick up as many as 273 passengers from Rome, Italy, for an international flight back to Dallas Fort Worth.
As reported by View From The Wing, the problem emerged on Thursday when American Airlines was forced to cancel its daily flight from DFW to Rome Fiumicino Airport, which is normally operated by a Boeing 777-200.
The reason that American Airlines gave for the cancellation was the rather opaque but commonly used excuse of ‘operational reasons,’ which could mean a whole slew of different reasons, such as crew or aircraft availability, or other commercial reasons.
What it doesn’t generally mean, however, is that the cancellation was due to bad weather or other external forces outside the airline’s control, and that could prove crucial in any compensation claims that passengers make.
Thankfully, for the passengers heading from Dallas to Rome, the airline was able to find a new plane to get to Italy, but rather than using the same flight number, American Airlines assigned it a special number, indicating that this was a one-off.
The reason was that rather than using the normal Boeing 777-200 that operates this route, the only spare aircraft that American Airlines could find was a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner with 34% less capacity than the originally planned aircraft.
The new flight, operating as flight AA-9606, departed Dallas Fort Worth three hours later than the cancelled service (flight AA-239) was scheduled at around 4:30 pm on September 4.
The plane landed at 9:14 am on September 5 in Rome, and you would then expect aircraft cleaners and ground staff to quickly get to work to get the plane ready for its return to Dallas.
That, however, is not going to happen, and that’s because American Airlines doesn’t have any available pilots in Rome who are qualified to fly the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
Generally speaking, commercial airline pilots are only trained and certified to fly one aircraft type. For example, the Airbus A320 series is considered one aircraft type, whether it be an A319, an A320, or an A321. The same rule applies to widebody aircraft.
So, the Boeing 777 is one aircraft type, whether that be a 777-200 or 777-300, and a Boeing 787 Dreamliner is its own aircraft type, which includes the 787-8, the 787-9, and the 787-10.
American Airlines operates a daily flight from Dallas to Rome using a Boeing 777, where the crew gets off and stays in Italy for 24 hours before flying back on the return flight. As a result, only Boeing 777-trained pilots were available in Rome, and they aren’t certified to fly the 787 Dreamliner.
Admittedly, American Airlines does also fly Boeing 787 Deamliners to Rome from New York JFK, Philadelphia, and Chicago, but given these are all daily services, the airline probably decided it didn’t have the capacity to move pilots from one service to another.
All of those extra flights do, at least, give American Airlines the option to rebook passengers from the canceled Rome to Dallas flight onto alternative services back to the United States.
If American Airlines can get these passengers to their final destination three hours after their scheduled arrival time, then it will be able to avoid paying out compensation under Europe’s EC261 passenger rights regulations.
If, however, any of these passengers are delayed by three hours or more, then they should be entitled to compensation of €600 (US $700) per passenger. If the flight was fully booked, and everyone was delayed by three hours or more, the total bill to American Airlines would be more than $191,000.
Airlines can generally avoid EC261 compensation payouts if they can prove the delay or cancellation was due to an ‘extraordinary circumstance.’ While lawmakers never bothered to define what an extraordinary circumstance is, the courts have ruled that this includes severe weather or external strike action.
It does not include mechanical problems, delays from another service, or crew availability issues.
Is ‘Mixed Fleet Flying’ the future for airline pilots?
As previously discussed, airline pilots are generally only certified to operate one aircraft type, but there are some notable exceptions.
Some countries are experimenting with the concept of ‘Mixed Fleet Flying’ in which pilots can operate two aircraft types interchangeably. This works when there is a high degree of commonality between the two aircraft types.
For example, in February 2024, Etihad Airways announced that its pilots would be trained to operate both the Airbus A350 and the A380 superjumbo. In the past, the airline has also trained pilots to fly the A320 and larger A330 model interchangeably.
Few aviation regulators have approved Mixed Fleet Flying, with the notable exception of the United Arab Emirates and Japan. In 2021, All Nippon Airways (ANA) introduced Mixed Fleet Flying between the Airbus A380 and the much smaller Airbus A320.
Air France has toyed with the idea of merging the 777 and 787 pilot subfleets.
You gotta get your aircraft types straight. You’ve got this all mixed around. You even say the normal aircraft is a 787 in one place and a 777 in another….
Just call it a 787. The “Dreamliner” thing is unnecessary. No tiegr plane gets an epithet.
Are they “toying” with the lives of their passengers or are the two aircraft types that similar?
Not very efficient use of highly trained pilots. Sounds like union mentality.
787 and 777 can be a single fleet and is with several operators. Don’t know if it’s the case for AA.
The compensation part is all wrong. The flight is cancelled outright, therefore it makes no difference if replacements get in within 3 hours or not. Rather it makes a difference if they depart less than 1 hour earlier and arrive less than 2 hours later (no compensation) or if they arrive less than 4 hours later (50% compensation)