American Airlines flight 2707 from Dallas to Austin was delayed over an hour on Monday night. The carrier’s maintenance technicians tried to tape an overhead bin in place – but it wouldn’t hold.
Faced with the choice of making a 9 p.m. flight even later – and potentially pushing crew past their minimum duty hours, where the entire flight would have to be cancelled – they decided not to spend any more time trying to fix it.
An overhead bin door that might break off on passengers is dangerous and can’t be left in place. An overhead bin that is not there, though? No danger in that!
So the maintenance crew pulled the overhead bin door off the ceiling of the aircraft.
Figured @garyleff would enjoy this @AmericanAir maintenance “issue”. Who knew the broken 1st class chair on my previous flight would have been the least of maintenance problems on AA today. At least we’re on time for both flights. pic.twitter.com/QAcSCCSqQh
— Zack (@ticotweets) February 20, 2024
Here’s video from the aircraft. You can see the maintenance crew trying to tape the bin door closed.
@AmericanAir AA 2707 delayed for over an hour as technicians tried to use tape to hold together the overhead. That failed, so they just broke it off. Then we sat on the runway over an hour after we landed because another broken plane was occupying our gate. This airline is full… pic.twitter.com/gmbwoVOHP7
— Dan Foehner (@foehner) February 20, 2024
Write it up, put an ‘inoperative’ sticker above it, and you can defer the maintenance. At that moment this pit crew was correctly far more interested in finishing the race than the aesthetics of the cabin.
I frequently criticize American Airlines for deferring maintenance on its cabins. It is easy to say in the moment that it is better than taking a delay. But keeping up the conditions of the cabin before things break matters, and performing maintenance so that interior issues don’t continue to fester matters. In this case, with a 9 p.m. departure with everyone just trying to get home, the choice made sense.
What? AA spend money? They’re in the miles-selling business, not air travel.
Look at that fat pig sitting there in first class with his sausage fingers.
This is typicAAL and par for the course with AA. Defer, defer, defer until you can’t defer any longer. The cabin interior aesthetic experience is a dumpster fire and has been for some time on the world’s largest regional airline.
Not sure if Delta has these issues, but if they do, I’d imagine they use a premium duct tape that holds up.
Had a similar issue on an AA flight, LAS-AUS. One overhead bin wouldn’t close so the maintenance crew taped it in place – that worked.
Wonder how much AA spends on buying those “Inoperative” stickers?
I love the AA response that “safety is important to us” — completely ignoring the point that their basic maintenance sucks.
Welcome to USAir!
2 missing bins on the same day? Going for great American! The picture from my flight was AA1010 from DFW to STL.
Now we know why American Airlines tries to check so many carry-on bags. It is due to deferred maintenance issues that frequently occur.
If they *CHARGED* for the use of the bins they would have a revenue stream to offset the maintenance!
BRILLIANT!!!!
Look at how visibly filthy dirty the cabin is; disgusting. AA has definitely become the worst major US airline.
Anyone flying Un-American Airlines deserves to get what they overpay for…
Does anyone remember the foreign carrier who tied the N1 fan down on their Boeing 767 (I think) with seat belt extensions and FLEW to Germany with passengers on one engine? Only because a German ground crew noticed something odd and turned around, a supervisor was called and the German “FAA” stopped the plane from later flying BACK! Or the British Airways 747 that lost an engine after takeoff from LAX and instead of turning around, continued to Heathrow only to land in Manchester because they were running out of fuel! All in the hopes of saving the outrageous flight delay fines! Maybe that will be American’s next move to save money. What a craphole airline they are turning out to be.
Win – What do you mean— ” a craphole airline they are turning out to be.”— they already are and have been for years…
I’ve seen this over and over!
One question. How are they suppose to keep the overhead bin from breaking before it breaks? With several flights per day, at some point a bin will probably break at an inconvenient time, such as the last flight to Austin. So it must be fixed or deferred. “The pit crew doesn’t care about cabin aesthetics.” Your article is entirely contradictory. The maintenance guys have to do the job properly. Tape didn’t work or the bin must be removed. Do you want to have to look at a black hole to get to Austin or spend another hour waiting for them to fix it? The maintenance guys are trying to get the flight out so it can be fixed overnight in Austin.
“Faced with the choice of making a 9 p.m. flight even later – and potentially pushing crew past their minimum duty hours, where the entire flight would have to be cancelled – they decided not to spend any more time trying to fix it.”
Oops. I guess that’s supposed to say, “and potentially pushing crew past their *maximum* duty hours…” 😉 😛
It’s exceeding MAXIMUM flight hours, not minimum flight hours.
“Pushing the crew past their minimum duty hours”. I’m pretty sure the word should be “maximum”. Once again, the thought leader shows us his leading thoughts. one of the best posts I’ve ever read here was the one where our thought lead leader said something like just because a blogger writes about something does not mean they are an expert.
That didn’t happen when it was American Airlines, that’s USAIR trademark!!