American Airlines Inc. is tuning up its operations to improve customer service, the Fort Worth, Texas, carrier said.

The airline -- the world's largest in total passenger-miles transported and fleet size -- has built an extra five to seven minutes into flight schedules at its busiest hubs, it said.

It is also looking for better ways of identifying available seats on the last flights of the night to accommodate stranded passengers, it said

Officials also are re-evaluating ground operations, flight routing and scheduling, The Dallas Morning News reported.

And the carrier is rethinking how it schedules maintenance and where it puts airplanes overnight for the next day's flying, the newspaper said.

In particular, the airline has made changes to better handle crews, airplanes and passengers when American's schedule is disrupted by weather, congestion or other problems, the airline said.

"We're going to make sure next summer is better than this summer was," Senior Vice President of Global Sales C. David Cush told the newspaper.

American and other airlines were plagued this summer by an overloaded air-traffic control system, full airplanes and an unusually high number of storms. 
 // Copyright 2007 by United Press International


Publication date: 26 September 2007   

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